Visiting Melbourne: Through JED's eyes

As promised, this post is Melbourne through the eyes of JED. Or it could be titled "What to do with Melbourne with children" because this post is about what JED loved about Melbourne.

I shall state from the outset that the twins are very infatuated with Melbourne. Jordan is ready to move there. Forever. She wants to go to school there and go like now, now now.

To JED, Melbourne was about 7 things.

1. The cold weather

This was the most important. That is, once they got used to it. Muffin was the one that took the longest to relish it. It went in order of the amount of insulation they had in their bodies. And Muffin doesn't have any, at all.

But once they climatised, they ran around with jackets and even ventured as far as going to the beach twice. Something I wouldn't have even considered no matter how mild the winter was.

2. The animals. 

JED love animals. But as with most urban kids, they are scared of them. So it was funny when Evan wanted to feed ducks (his favourite animal in the world) and run away when the ducks approached him for more. It was similar with the guinea pigs that they could play with at the petting zoo. Evan wanted to have the guinea pig but was squealing about it being ticklish because of its claws. I liked the Open Range safari type animals more than the local Aussie ones and while I understood that it made sense for the joey to be head in in the pouch, I was grossed out by the fact that there were a pair of legs sticking out of Mama-Kanga's belly. No one got why I was grossed out so I was left alone to make faces.

3. The playgrounds

With the benefit of space, the playgrounds around Melbourne were awesome. And I don't mean it in the tween way, I mean it in the "jaw dropping, covet and want to steal it back to Singapore, talk about it all the time" way. 

Every day, we explored a new playground and every evening, there would be the request of going back to the same playground the next day. Because it was just that much fun. It didn't matter that they spent good long stretches of time at the playground, it was never enough. 

Even the adults were hard-pressed to  vote on which was the best playground. 

a. Parkville

Packrat and I loved Parkville because it was behind our old uni and where he lived. We also loved it because it showed great sensitivity to the landscape. It was just a playground plonked into a field. The architectures built the playground into the natural landscape with slopes and trails integrated. Then there was a large hill that we could scale and the Grey's Anatomy fan in me loved the fact that from the playground or the top of the hill, you could see medical helicopters landing on the hospital rooftop across the road. 

JED loved it because it was challenging, sprawling and so open to the imagination. They played hide and seek but gradually settled to play at the dam structure, which in itself was a stroke of genius. The kids could build a network of waterways in the sand and there was an irrigation system that they could work, pump water and dam before releasing it into their waterways. Over and over again, in different permutations. 

My only concern about the playground was that it was so sprawling that you couldn't quite keep an eye on the kids all the time from one spot. But other than that, we spent 2 days and had lunch there. Even then, it was really with a heavy heart to leave. And also to know that should we ever come back, the twins would be too old to enjoy it as much. 

b. St Kilda
St Kilda's a pretty bohemian part of Melbourne and it follows that the playground there is similarly so. It looked like a junkyard with odd pieces of wood structures painted in a cacophony of colours. There was a haphazard feel to it, it was challenging in places for the kids with an adrenaline junkie's dream of a flying fox that whizzed at top speed and only stopped with a mighty clang when it hit the end and caused the kid to rebound or get thrown off into wood chips (though we didn't see any kid get thrown off!)

Similar to the Parkville playground, even though we spent 3 hours there, JED didn't cover every inch of it. They climbed a tree, discovered secret tunnels built under the playground structures and tried to run up a skateboard run which was close to impossible. The playground was run by the city council and there were crates of free fruit for the kids. With places like these where you can see so much love and care has gone into creating it, I was happy that I could put in a donation to keep the place going or to help buy the next crate of fruit.

4. Fake snow
I badly wanted to drive up to Mt Buller for some snow even if we didn't ski. But the men, who were the designated drivers refused to budge. It was too long a drive to see mounds of ice and they couldn't imagine tetchy kids all the way there and disappointed kids back. The next alternative was an ice rink near the hotel that had a fake snow slope.

The cold, together with the speed thrilled JED to bits especially because the only way to stop was to crash headlong into a thick padded wall. Muffin and Jordan were the most adept. I came down screaming while Evan internalised all his fear with a constipated look on his face. It wasn't enough to totally get the snow jollies out of the way but it did go some way into assuaging it.

5. Rowing a boat
If at any time, a child suggests that rowing a boat would be fun, heavily indoctrinated by years of singing that insipid kid song, please say no. Against our better judgement, we agreed to row a boat down the duck pond. With 5 in the boat, the weight wasn't evenly spread out and that meant I spent half the time worried we might truly capsize. And never believe the children when they promise to help row because all they do is splatter water and complain their arms hurt. So rather than rowing, we spun in circles in the general direction of the current, bouncing off both banks and miraculously spun back to where we started. By then, there was water in the boat and JED had all been splashed by algey mucky water that was filled with duck pee.

6. Autumn leaves

There is a Chinese saying about fishing that goes along the lines of "even if can't catch fish, settle for the shrimp". It sounds better in Chinese. That was the philosophy that JED approached Melbourne winter. To them, winter meant snow. We spent the better part of the year dispelling that notion so they settled for the next best thing. Leaves.

Piles of leaves, leaf tracks, just shuffling and rustling in leaves, picking at them, comparing the different shades of yellow, orange and green was interesting enough that they left the adults alone.

 

7. Friends 

There was always fun to be had where ever they were because they were 5 of them, 4 of them of similar age. There were squabbles and differences but they tried hard to work it out for themselves and figured out the best dynamics amongst them. They didn't sleep together but played together, ate together and even celebrated their birthdays together.

The adults vowed that for as far as possible, we will try to bring them away together because these are what make for good memories for them. 

My takeaway from the entire trip was that fun didn't need to be expensive at all. So, no we didn't go and see the penguins. Nor did we take the windy Great Ocean Road or the coal spitting- tear inducing choo choo train round the Dandenongs. And it really didn't matter to JED nor their friends.

Every one needs more of these sorts of holidays. It does wonders for the soul.

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Revisiting Melbourne

We've been wanting to go back to Melbourne for a very long time. We moved back to Singapore close to 15 years ago and haven't been back for 10 years. Since JED were now old enough to appreciate Melbourne as where "Mommy and Daddy met and went to school", we thought it was a good time to do it.

We didn't expect to feel as nostalgic as we did when we got there. So this post is basically Melbourne, through our eyes, as opposed to the subsequent post, which will be Melbourne, through the eyes of JED.

What we generally did was to re-trace our lives in Melbourne, right from touch down.

There was
1. Breakfast at Thresherman's. 
We didn't eat here on a daily basis because we were poor students but on the occasion or when there was family in town, we'd come here for brunch. It was a 5 minute walk from our house. I remember giant fruit salad take away bowls, hot soup in the winter and farmer's breakfasts. Incidentally, when we bought the farmer's breakfast for JED, they complained it tasted weird. When we tried it, we realised that their definition of weird was our definition of 'fresh'.
 

2. Uni of course.
Because we were at Thresherman's, we were close to uni and since we couldn't check in to our apartment, we went to uni for a walk around. That's when all the feels came flooding back.

To humour JED, we recreated a photo we took when we got engaged and we took a photo at the stop light where we first met.

But for us, it was walking around, remembering what it was like to walk through the various buildings and hallways on the way to lectures, marvelling about the things that hadn't changed and the buildings that were new, bright and shiny.

There is something about old buildings, blue skies and trees that makes the heart rate slow and the blood pressure drop a bit.

3. The old apartment

No trip down memory lane would be complete without visiting the old house. We pointed out to the twins where we would BBQ, where we kept our dog for a while, where Packrat and their Uncle's bedroom was. We told them about Barry the neighbourhood cat who would surely be dead by now though it didn't stop us from looking in the same places that he would hang out.

3. Food

I warned Packrat that when it came to food, we might be a bit disappointed because we were students on a budget then and now that we are a bit older and more discerning, it could possibly be a case of "What did I just put in my mouth?".

There was Italian at Sofia's where it was about mass rather than quantity as well as taking up the challenge of the giant gelato. Even with 9 people, we didn't manage to finish the gelato nor the food but everyone was happy and left in a blissfully stupourous state.

There was also Vietnamese many times over, steaks for our carnivorous tribe and some Chinese thrown in for familiarity sake. For Packrat and myself, souvalkis were necessary because souvalkis remind us of our first real date. Unfortunately, it was a truly a situation where the eyes were larger than the tummy because we couldn't finish the souvalkis. We forgot to take into account the difference between 20 year old's and a 40 year old's appetite.

4. Friends

No pictures here but meeting up with ex students who have lived in Melbourne for longer than I did as well as ex-classmates was on the agenda. We visited their homes, ate where they ate and did what they did. Not touristy at all. In fact, it was these meet ups where we learnt of the reality that Melbourne is actually more costly to live than Singapore, that housing, transportation and even food ($3 for a box of plain rice is daylight robbery) is as costly if not more than in Singapore. A nice reality check for the grass is always greener sentiments.

And then, for me, there was
5. Ballet.

Not specifically for me but for Jordan, to meet my old ballet teacher and to take class in my old ballet school. Time stood still in the ballet school, right down to the carpeting and the ballet studios. Even the teachers. Jordan got to meet my old teacher and take some classes with her. What she taught Jordan, watching her teach class and instilling the same discipline and etiquette I remember from all those years ago, I felt I was an undergrad and the years had melted away. But I wasn't.

10 days of re-tracing our steps and then we had to pack up and come back to reality. But while it lasted, it was good.

Some would say that the past should stay in the past. But I think that occasionally, it's a good thing to touch base with the past. It reminds us of simpler times, what it's like to slow down a little bit, not to get too caught up in the things that actually don't matter and laugh some.

 

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Odyssey

There's been radio silence.

There's a reason for it. Every couple of years, we take the kids on what has become a traditional odyssey of sorts.

To date, our odysseys have been to the North American continent and this one was no different.

It was meant to herald the beginning of Muffin's primary school life. We did a similar one to Hawaii when the twins were entering primary school.

Our vacation this time was unabashedly non-educational. There was going to be no value in it in terms of exposing them to new lands, new cultures, geography or scenery. We went with one intention; to go on the Disney Cruise, which itself was just about indulgence and comfort. Add on to that, being in the theme park city of the world, we spent the rest of our time in theme parks, riding roller coasters and soaking in everything make believe and computer generated. In other words, we did not go to the United States, we went on a themepark holiday.

But JED had a great time as did we. And it wasn't true that they didn't learn anything. This trip was a first for them in many ways.

1. They had to look after themselves and they did so in a myriad of ways.
In Orlando, they slept in the upstairs bedroom while we were downstairs. They were in charge of getting themselves ready in the morning without any prompting. Many a morning, they appeared at my bedroom door all ready to head to the parks.

2. They had to look after each other.
On occasion, we would leave them alone to get groceries, get dinner and even do a spot of shopping. My paranoid imagination had them fighting and hurting each other or me coming home to a house on fire. But none of that played up. They watched TV, cleared the table at the designated time (as monitored by Evan), brought everything into the kitchen with no mess and nothing broken (supervised by Jordan) and then trooped up to wash up (closely watched by a hawk-like Muffin).

3. They looked after their own things.
For children who have a helper in the house, they can be awfully spoilt and messy. But on vacation and with my declaration that I wasn't going to pick up after them, after the nth time they were unable to find their toys or their pyjamas smelt funky because they left them in a pile together with a wet towel, almost everything got folded away or put away nicely. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough.

Granted, there was the non-Facebook- non Disneyfied version. That included
a) a bout of food poisoning which required a jab and quarantine
b) a hacking cough (that lasted all holiday and made it back 3 continents)
c) bad food (Poor Chinaman Muffin had nothing much to eat except for fries, hash browns, sausages and chicken tenders and even that got old quite quickly)
d) the occasional bad weather (either too hot or too cold)
e) too much walking causing exhausted, painful feet, whiny children too heavy to carry
g) bad airport queues causing us to almost miss on flights on multiple occasions
f) 13 hour long transatlantic flights with our girl child who was unable to sleep, kept throwing up and eventually only settled sleeping on the cabin floor at the back of the plane.

But even then, we miss it.

So, posterity, the a video that JED and Packrat worked very hard to make.



It'll be a holiday we all will be talking about for a long time to come.

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Flying solo

I have a baby craving.

Some of my friends have recently had babies. And I miss babies. Plus my youngest baby is almost 6 and not so much of a baby anymore.

I was lamenting my plight to Packrat, a key player in any sort of baby making endeavour and he wryly commented that if that were the case, I would be having babies all the way into my 70s. And I was telling him this over a hot lunch where no kids were needing our attention because we were far away in another country without them. He did not fail to point that out to me either.

But that's just the part of me that misses the baby-smell talking. The part that feels sleep-deprived, exhausted and broke all the time makes it very clear it's a bad idea. Also, the fact that I have recently started to sprout whites on my head, possibly to do with both stress and age tell me that it's not a good idea.

But the most compelling reason to ignore the baby craving is actually the reason why I have the craving in the first place.

JED are all growed up now.

A case in point.

Packrat had to fly solo with them to Phuket. I was flying out on a later flight so he took them on his own. JED were warned to listen and to always stay close to Papa because the airport was crowded.

Evan took Muffin's hand and held it tight. He said to Muffin warningly, "You must always hold my hand. If you lose me and lose Papa, the plane will fly off without you." Muffin obediently followed.

Travelling in December is always a circus because half of Singapore leaves its shore. So Packrat had to distribute to each child their passport and give them instructions on how to go through Immigration by themselves, telling them to point to him if asked who they were travelling with. Each child sailed through, smiling at the Immigration Officer, answering their questions and being rewarded with sweets.

On top of that, flying budget and choosing not to pay the extra $5 per passenger to choose seats meant seats were allocated. They were allocated 3 seats in a row and a lone window seat two rows down. Packrat had no choice but to seat JED altogether and squish himself into the window seat. Because he was stuck, JED had to fend for themselves; entertaining themselves, going to toilet and battling the the, in their opinion, scary toilet flush. When Packrat was reunited with them upon landing, he found them each munching a bar of Kit Kat which the stewardess had given them because they had been so good through the flight.

By the time I got into Phuket, Packrat was a proud Papa with tales of how his afternoon hadn't been all that stressful because JED had been so cooperative and on the ball with stuff.

I saw it for myself the next morning when I was met with made up beds, clothes neatly folded onto shelves and all washed up and ready to go for breakfast. It wasn't perfect but it was decent enough. When we were preparing to go back, I told JED to pack everything on their shelf (where I had allocated space for each of them) into their bags. For the most part, their clothes went into the bags higgity-piggity but all was in and all were proud that they had packed their own luggage all by themselves.

It's great to be at the point where they can do most things on their own and look after themselves. And much as I would love to smell the top of a baby's head whenever I want to and be able to have a baby around, I think the fact that I'm getting more sleep every night and slowly gaining some aspect of me-space/ time back are very strong reasons to get a grip on this baby craving.

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Making a will

Last year when all the air disasters started happening almost in succession, the paranoid and somewhat morbid me started worrying about what would happen to JED if anything, touch many pieces of wood, were to happen to us.

And while that is a scenario that I truly never want to consider and hope that it never ever happens, I didn't think it would wise to live in that much denial. Because my denial could one day hurt JED.

So, I started thinking about making a will.

To even make that decision to make a will was difficult. I pretty much had to stop being ostrich-like and pull my head out of the ground. And it was coming to terms with the possibility of my pre-deceasing the children.

That was hard.

But because Packrat and I occasionally travel without the children, it would truly be irresponsible for us to not have everything in place. I know of people who think that by doing so, we were cursing ourselves and our children by doing that.

We're travelling again, year end without JED. And I'm nervous about it. Every time there is yet another plane crash, I quake and shudder. But at the same time, it would be the beginning of a very huge and steep slippery slope if I stopped travelling because I was worried of orphaning my children. Then I ought to not drive because car accidents are so much more prevalent. And I shouldn't eat chicken and other hormonally enhanced meat because I could die of cancer... slippery slope.

So the only thing we could do short of cancelling the trip or carrying out a personal pre-flight check of all the aircraft we are flying (though lot of good that would do) was to get started on making the will. So I did eventually call up our lawyer friend to start the ball rolling. 

Preliminarily, he said we had to think about various things, including what our declarable assets were (not much!) and in my opinion, more importantly, who ought to be the executor of our will and who would be the legal guardians of JED. 

Apparently, the executor has to be someone who is good with the nitty gritty but also someone who knew the children because they would be the ones who would eventually have to deal with the executor. 

The executor and the legal guardians also had to be people who would be less likely to pre-decease us, meaning that they couldn't be aged or ill at this point. So no grandparents. Picking the executor, we felt was an easier decision to make because the executor's role is a short-termed one. The legal guardian, that was going to be a different matter.

It led to an interesting conversation between Packrat and myself about who ought to be JED's legal guardians. 

We had loose parameters: 

1. The people in question had to love kids even if they didn't have any. 

2. They had to be familiar with and to JED (Children stories are often have the poor protagonist staying with a mean aunt/ relative because the child had been orphaned) and loved  JED. So preferably people they were close  to. 

3. They had to be people who understood our parenting philosophy and hopefully would parent in approximately the same manner. 

4. They had to be people who would raise the children in strong Christian faith. 

The various parameters did whittle down some we were considering. Eventually our decision was to ask two of very close friends as well as one of our siblings. When I asked the sibling, the response was "YAY! Pizza and ice cream for dinner every day!" Ah hence, the need to for co-guardianship. 

But when I told our close friends it would be a co-guardianship arrangement, their response was "How's that going to work?" and my response to them was "We'll be dead. You all can go slug it out." 

Moments of reprieve and relief in what is obviously a very serious topic of conversation.

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Grandpa's 70th: The undelivered speech

A part of Grandpa's dinner celebration involved speeches honouring Grandpa. The plan was for Packrat and his brother to say something followed by Grandpa's best friend saying something and then, us the daughters-in-law saying something. It was going to be a night of speeches and with a bunch of young kids running around, we decided on a truncated version of the list of speeches. Inevitably, the daughters-in-law round was the round to get cut.

But Grandpa still wanted to hear what we had to say and it seemed like an apt way to round off the my entire series for Grandpa's 70th.

What we were going to do was to tell those gathered some things that they didn't already know about Grandpa.

And this was what Jordan and I came up with.

1. Dad always wanted a daughter but we think he got more than he bargained for with his wife, two chattering daughters-in-law and three non-stop nattering grand daughters who occasionally rise to decibels that only dogs can hear. We all love him very much but we sometimes wonder if he misses the quiet.

2. Dad loves and cherishes making memories. He isn't big on treating himself to big luxury items but has brought us all on holidays and never says no when we ask him to come on holiday with us. JED will grow up remembering both grandparents in all their early holidays. They do not stop talking about the holidays they have gone on, with their grandparents. In fact, when we travel without Grandpa and Grandma, JED ask where they are. 

3. Dad is a great cook and loves cooking for those he loves. We all look forward to Sunday lunches because it's always a feast. When we were in Hawaii last year with them, Muffin went through a phase where he only ate fried rice and it HAD to be "Ah Gong's" fried rice. Grandpa's dream is for his grandchildren to ring him over the week to let him know what they want for Sunday lunch. God bless him and Grandma when all 5 children each demand something radically different!

4. Dad's been a great influence on our children. We have two 7 year olds who are as excited to watch BBC's Blue Planet as they are to watch Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo. And our 4 year old went through a time where he only sang the Prologue from Les Miserables. Only Grandpa and Grandma understood why Muffin would spontaneously bellow '24601!'. (It's a Les Miserables thing)

5.This is from Jordan so it's Grandpa rather than Dad. Grandpa dreamt of being a hairdresser. How do I know this? He always has a comb in his back pocket. And when my hair is messy, he takes it out and combs my hair beautifully.

So there, the bits that were going to make up my speech to honour my 70 year old father-in-law, father to Packrat and Ah Gong to JED.

To many more years of love, laughter and long vacations!

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Separation Anxiety

As teachers, we don't travel as much for work. When I did travel for work, I went away for long stretches but that was pre- kids. I no longer do. Packrat still does so; for conferences, courses and student trips.

So when he had to fly off to Japan this evening, we thought nothing about bringing JED to the airport to say bye. After all, they've been home with just me for close to three weeks without Papa and they were fine.

What we hadn't counted on was that Evan was now old enough to feel the loss of Papa leaving. I recently blogged about Papa being his best friend and while I knew that he was worried about Packrat leaving, it really hadn't occurred to us that he would take the leaving so badly.

First he followed Packrat like a puppy, while Packrat gave instructions to his students. He sought out Packrat to hold his hand or just be in physical contact with him. Then when he saw Packrat's luggage get checked in and he knew it was a matter of minutes before Packrat needed to go through security, his eyes began to redden. I said in an earlier post that Packrat had a good sense of what Evan needed so he disengaged himself from his students and comes round to Evan, swooping all 26 kg into his arms. He whispered a prayer with Evan so that Evan might be reassured that he would come back.

But that act of affection and intimacy set free the flood gates that Evan had been so valiantly holding back. And he sobbed as if his heart had just been broken. No amount of consolation and holding him calmed him down. He wanted his Papa.

My eventual solution to calm him down was to take him in search of supper. That however, worked for as long as it took him to finish his sausage roll. He kept talking about how he couldn't stop thinking about Papa and who was going to help him build his Transformers and talk to him about Star Wars.

I know how difficult and awful it feels when I travel sans JED and I'm pretty sure that if any of JED pulled that on me before I had to go anywhere, I would have willingly given up my plane ticket and gone home.

Hanging onto Papa and not allowing him to work. Perhaps thinking that by doing that, Papa will not leave.

The boys sticking to Papa like glue while Jordan is happy to clown around.

Hopefully the night's sleep puts things into perspective for Evan and that he will feel better in the morning. I suspect the Saturday treat of watching television will help loads. 

Whatever it is, I join him in wishing that the week will pass fast so that Packrat will be back again.

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Surviving the Vacation

There is always a sense after a family vacation that we, the parents, actually need a vacation of our own to recover from the previous one. Thankfully, we've gotten more seasoned at travelling with JED and JED have become older, so it is a little bit easier. There is less of a compulsion to drop them off at an orphanage and jet off to the Maldives.

But we also do try to make it a point to make it easier on ourselves.

1. We rent self-service apartments or houses.
This meant we didn't have to bring enough clothes to last the duration of our vacation. Travelling light becomes important especially when flights land at odd hours and we have to wrestle sleeping children as well as luggage and car seats [thankfully, that (car seats) should stop being a problem soon!]

It also meant we were able to cook and not need to subject ourselves to ridiculously priced restaurant food. Plus the nutrition conscious nut in me felt better knowing what JED actually put away into their bodies. People find this troublesome and it could be. But it's was much cheaper, we didn't have to wrestle with cranky children back into the car and we didn't have to worry about them making a scene in a public place; all of which could have been even more stress inducing.

 

2. Not be ambitious.

We did not pack our itinerary at all. It was a ' one thing a day' type of vacation. If we were going to the beach, we would just go to the beach. The Kids being kids took a long time to move and there was always toileting, feeding and stopping for no reason to be done. Plus the kids got tired after a bit. Cranky kids meant difficult kids. So in the words of our travelling partners, where ever we went, however far we intended to travel, we would to take into consideration time back and most of the time, that meant the 'exercise cut' (using an NS term) time was usually about 3 pm so that we could get back in time to start dinner, get the kids bathed and ready for bed without too much hysterics. 

3. Keeping them occupied. 

By this, I don't mean gadgets though it did get inevitable at times. A 5 hour flight with no in flight entertainment meant pulling out entertainment stops of our own. By the 5th hour, I wanted to just sit and read a bit so we gave them the gadgets for the landing. This was also to distract them from the ear popping pressure of descent. 

Anyway, we used some of the luggage space we saved from bringing clothes to bring all sorts of distractions. Games, play dough, books, puzzles and Jordan's rainbow loom set. We set writing tasks for the twins to do in the mornings before the day started. So they would sit down and write about their day before and what they wanted to do in the day to come. By the middle of the vacation, they were used to doing that and that would be the time I would use to get breakfast for them ready.

The rest of the time, they just mucked about with each other and came up with their own games. So even though I had to be up when they were up, I could pretty much sit and read my book while they "parted the Red Sea" and kicked an odd shaped ball (a footie ball) around in the garden at the back.

4. Make them accountable for one another.
It wasn't just about making the older two look after Muffin. It was about everyone looking after everyone else. When they crossed the road, they had to be holding onto someone else's hand. If they ran off, they had to look back to see where everyone else was. If someone fell, they had to help pick the child up and someone needed to come and tell us. That meant, everyone had to keep an eye out on everyone else. Even Muffin knew to look out for his siblings and his friends and they were often a gaggle of wandering children, the operative term here being 'gaggle'. While not fool-proof, it meant that we didn't have to worry as much about where everyone was at any given time, even if we were in a supermarket.

 

5. Find the playgrounds.

At this age, the favourite things for JED to do were to go to the beach or the playground. So we found playgrounds for them. If in Perth and you are headed south, head to Donnybrook, the apple capital of Western Australia. It's home to the Donnybrook Apple Fun Park, the biggest free playground in Australia. All the kids loved it and we went back 3 days in a row and they never tired of it. Because we were on vacation and regular Aussie school terms were still in session, the playgrounds were empty. They had the run of the place and keeping an eye out for them was relatively easy.

I would have lain in the sun and taken a nap if I wasn't so fascinated by how much fun they were having and what they were doing on the apparatus. 

And even when we didn't feel like driving to the Fun Park, we were flanked by parks and playgrounds all over. So every day, all the kids went to a new playground. They relished the wood chip playgrounds and the open fields where they could tumble and roll around. 

By the end of it, they were wind-blown, hungry and ready to call it a day. For most days, this was how our days would end. 

No real big secrets but just the little things that made it a little bit easier for the kids and by extension us. It was by no means peaceful and it didn't mean that I didn't lose my cool with them or yell at them. But it did mean that the flashes of annoyances passed more quickly and there weren't periods of extreme and extended stress. And that meant, relatively speaking, we managed to have quite a bit of fun as well. 

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Something old and something new

Most of our JED holidays are to places that aren't all that exotic or exciting. We tend to play it safe and simple with them because it's just easier that way.

But even then, there are always new things for them to experience.

1. Bang around a piano in the middle of a market

and have people toss coins at them. (Perhaps, begging them to stop)

2. Play in a fruit warehouse

and play hide and seek around a trailer truck. (Yes, this was under parental supervision and the truck was stationary)


3. Sleep in a basement 

where you could hear people walk over the ceiling. (Ghosts, they insisted.)

4.  Feed the fowl that they eat

and the ones that could eat them.

5.  Play in a huge open field

 

flanked by electric fencing to keep the cows in (the fences weren't on.)

6.  Go nuts at a mega playground

3 days in a row and not fully cover the whole playground

7. Have sheep just outside your window grazing

 

and fall so hopelessly in love with them that you are loathe to leave them. (Harry and Harriet are their names)

8. Take a photograph in the exact same spot

 

they did, 4 years ago, almost to the day. 

9. Play footie in the yard

despite 120km/h gale force winds bending the trees behind them.

10. Rough and tumble on grass

 that is 'oh so soft!'

11. Have a dog walk

all four of them at the same time.

And for us, it was just great fun just watching them have so much fun.

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