Geocaching adventures begin

Finally, today I managed to do something I've been hankering to do for ages and ages. We took the family and went on a geocaching adventure! We picked a location close to home, loaded the software on to our iphone and set off. After a few muddling moments using the application for the first time we managed to get ourselves into the right place, and from there it was a short search for the cache itself. We had fun, and I'm looking forward to heading off on another journey soon. It's an activity which manages to combine geekery, puzzles, activity and nature in a very pleasant blend.

Team madeinmelbourne, flushed with success at our first cache find.

Now we are four months...

We visited Heronswood for Grammy's birthday and had a lovely day perusing the gardens.


I had my first official public meltdown after our dinner for Grandpa's birthday. I lasted all through dinner (refusing to nap, as I usually do) but lost it just as Aunty Katie, Uncle Marcus, Ma and Pa were sitting down to desert.

I have gone from smiling to out-and-out laughing. I started slowly with a few chuckles here and there (which sounded like dorky, staccato growls) to squealing, pealing laughter.


I just figured out puppies live in our house, and I love them. Any time they are allowed near me they sniff, paw and (try to) lick me. I spend a lot of time watching them.

I have taken to the Jolly Jumper with glee.


We've kept hanging out at mother's group, and I like it a lot. Every week me and the other babies stare at each other more and more. We're getting very curious about each other.

I like to hang out at the park, walking around the lake and watching the variety of ducks, geese, swans and water fowl that live along the water.


Sadly I've grown out of the baby bath (until I can sit up in it on my own) and instead I take a shower with Ma or Pa every night. I love the feeling of water pattering all over me.


I'm now able to pick up my own toys and hold them. I love Sophie the giraffe, and happily spend around an hour a day playing with the toys that dangle from my play mat.

I met yet another senator. Pa's friend Senator Scott Ludlam came over and we hung out.


We now have a regular book we read before sleeping every night, Snug As A Hug, and when I see it I settle down with contented cooing. Other favourite books at the moment are Penguin by Polly Dunbar (which Grammy bought for me on one of our excursions) and Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. Todd Parr is still my favourite.

So now the list of places I've been breastfed is getting long and includes an apple orchard, a beach, the car, country lanes, the drive-in, cafes, CERES, the park and the pub. This is us at Cherchez la Femme feeding in the back corner.


I now notice music played for me. I still get sung Go To Sleep You Little Baby every night, and we also listen to a lot of Josh Pyke or Ma's favourite Thelonious Monk tracks.

Like Pa, I'm already addicted to technology. Anything with moving images draws my attention instantly.


I'm still sleeping really well at nights but not so much with naps during the day. We're working on it.

On raising a feminist son

When imagining my future as a mother, I had ideas about how I would raise daughters. Many ideas. They were about passing on the strengths I had inherited from the women in my family, from my mother and grandmother, my aunts. They were about raising a feminist daughter.

When I imagined raising sons, my only clear idea was to raise them with respect for women. All women. Now that my son is here, that seems so inadequate. How do you parent a white, more or less middle class boy who is innately privileged by his gender and perceived class? How do you encourage a healthy self esteem, a sense of worth, while also teaching him that no matter what society tells him he is not more valuable or worthy than anyone else? I have a lot to learn.

I've already begun with the basics. For every piece of blue clothing he has been generously gifted, I go out of my way to find gender neutral items. More than that, I also make an effort for him to wear clothes with ruffles, pinks, flowers and swirls. His room was decorated before we knew his gender, but by virtue of our own personal tastes was more 'masculine' than 'feminine'. After he was born I made an effort to mix in more soft and pretty elements. He has a mix of both Himself and I's toys from our childhoods, including my dolls, dollhouse and glittery knick-knacks. All chosen for our own sentimental attachments rather than gender concerns. His ever-growing library has a large section of books featuring female lead-characters, as many as possible in roles other than princess and sister.

All of this is done from a desire to encourage him to develop as a person without having external ideas of gender enforced on him in his own home. We cannot change what he will be influenced by outside our own sphere, but inside it we can offer him the freedom to be himself without consideration of what his interests/behaviour/ideas are on a gender-identified scale. I want him to be confident that masculinity can (and should) include a wide range of emotions, crying, softness, nurturing, pink and anything else he wants it to. I see this as the first step in raising a feminist son. To offer him an environment where he isn't encouraged to identify as Boy first, with all the baggage that entails, and not to see anything overtly female/feminine/girly as negative.

In the meantime, I've got some reading to do (who knew I would find reading to be the solution to yet another problem?) to figure out what else it will take to raise this feminist son. Thank goodness for the interwebs, where I can look to women like this, this and this to get me thinking.

Now we are three months...

Three months is the age for learning to stand on your own two feet, metaphorically and literally. I'm pretty impressed with myself with this whole standing thing, particularly when Ma or Pa help me bounce up and down.

I've been craving some time to hang out on my own, without those parentals cramping my style. I really like playing on my own for a while each day, and now I can control my body a little bit better I get more and more joy from every little thing I can do.

I joined my parents and Steve on their annual trip to the Grampians Grape Escape. I was much more chilled out on this little jaunt than when we stayed in Lorne, and proved yet again that I'm happy to sleep pretty much anywhere.


I'm now the chattiest little guy on the planet. I love nothing more than looking right into someone's eyes and talking my own brand of Avery-speak for as long as they will talk back.

I'm a drool machine, obsessed with chewing on my hands, Ma and Pa's hands, cloths and any/everything else I can get my hands on. Which has begun suspicions that I am teething.

We went to an orchard in the Yarra Valley and picked our own apples.


Ma and I are settling in to a routine. Now she's only working on one publication we have plenty of time to hang out at home or head off on walks and adventures.

We went to our first mother's group, which Ma was worried would be filled with crazy women. In actual fact we're enjoying it and we're both hoping to make some friends. I'm obsessed with the other babies there and I love staring at them, whether they are crying, smiling, looking back at me or sleeping.

I continue to make the parentals count their blessings by sleeping like a champion. I'm happy to have a feed, cuddle and song or two and then drift off to sleep in my own cradle. Most of the time I manage to sleep for a good seven or eight hours in a row per night, plus another four or so after a quick night feed. Ma is pretty well rested, all considered! She's certainly relieved that sleep is (so far) not the battle ground she was expecting. I do not, however, believe in napping during the day. And not for more than 20 minutes at a time. I will not be convinced.


Has anyone ever told you how freakin' cool hands are? You know that episode of Futurama where Lrrr (of the planet Omecron Persei 8) is all, like, "duuuuude, my hands can touch anything except for themselves"... yeah, well, I spent this month pretty much staring at my hands in the same fashion. I've also managed to get these hands to hold stuff long enough for me to put it in my mouth. Double win.

Ma and Pa are still taking me out to hang out with people all the time, which I really enjoy. My favourite way to spend time is sitting and watching the conversations that happen around me. Or staring down the people around me until they return their attentions to me.


My Grammy comes to mind me every Tuesday afternoon and we hang out together for a few hours all by ourselves. Some weeks I torture her by crying and grumping, most of the time I'm pretty happy to have her undivided attention.

I'm still crazy about reading, and my current favourite books are Todd Parr's, particularly The Peace Book and Reading Makes Your Feel Good. I've taken to reading along with Ma and Pa in Avery-speak.

Ma and I went to our first baby session at the library, on the advice of Aunty Katie. It was pretty cool, except when everyone clapped at the end of each song. I was shocked (okay, scared). Every time. Clearly I'm not cut out for a life on the stage.

I've grown out of another whole size of clothing. I'm now well and truly into the double zero range. How did that happen?

McSteamy Diapers

Hold the presses ladies, a man is changing his own child's nappies. And he's good looking! Surely a woman would be happy enough to bear him a child, without him having to do anything but pass those good-looking genes along. Will wonders never cease.

Now that's front page news.