A Date With My Boys

A few weeks ago, Playschool was coming to town. Well, not our town, but one a few hours away. My sister and I decided that we would road-trip it and take our three boys. Alas and alack, my nephew came down quite sick the night before and our plans were dashed. I decided though, that I would do something special with my boys by myself anyway. I didn't want to do the big drive to Playschool on my own, so I chose something a bit closer to home and took the boys to "Snakes Downunder Reptile Park & Zoo".

It was such a fun day out. The term 'zoo' might be a bit far-reaching, but reptile park it is indeed. When we arrived, we literally had the whole place to ourselves, and the non-venomous snake show was about to start. Reuben enjoyed seeing all the big snakes, and also one very special "dinosaur" (read: baby crocodile)... but the fun was just beginning.

You see, after the show, the handler brought out one of the large pythons, and the said dinosaur, and let us have a hold! It was so cool that we were the only ones there at that point; no waiting around for the boys, and we got to spend as much time with the creatures as we pleased. Reuben was keen to hold both animals-- I myself was not quite so keen. Unfortunately, I was required to help him hold the crocodile as it was much too heavy for him to have on his own. It was well out of my comfort zone to do so, but he was beside himself with excitement. And not to worry, as Reuben explained to my mum, the dinosaur couldn't bite him, because he had sticky tape on his lips. Ha! I know I should have corrected him about the whole dinosaur thing but it just bought him such a great lot of joy to think of it as a dinosaur that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Holding a crocodile. You wouldn't do this at a Playschool concert! Note my very forced smile.

Next up was the creepy horrid snake. Reuben again couldn't have been more excited to have his hold. The handler wound the snake around his body, and Reuben giggled as the snake explored around his neck, flicking its tongue in and out. I took a bunch of photos of my little man, cool as a cucumber, with this gigantic snake wrapped around his body. He handled it really well; only freaking out a tiny bit when the snake tightened its grip around Reuben's legs when it started to slip down at one point. The handler offered Mama a hold, but I was nowhere near as brave as my cool little dude and politely declined.

"Yeah, that's right, I'm holding a snake". Coolest dude.

Quinten was sitting in his pram while all this was happening, but as the handler unwrapped the snake from Reuben, he started to call and reach out toward it. He was, of course, too little to handle the snake properly, but the handler head it over him in his pram, and Quin was delighted about the whole thing. He had a pat, the snake flicked its tongue all over Quinten's feet to check him out, which Quin thought was completely hilarious.

Do you think Quinny's a parseltongue?

Once all that was over, we explored the rest of the park and said hello to all the other animals. We watched a koala presentation which the boys were pretty underwhelmed by-- the Koala's were sitting with their backs to us and pretty much just ignored us.

The koala's weren't in the mood for being show ponies today.

The kangaroos were a bit more accommodating, and we spent quite a while hanging out with them - once we got brave enough to sneak past the Emus who were guarding the gate! They are rather big and intimidating creatures!

Old Man Emu

Reuben was so cute talking to the kangaroos.

Sizing each other up.

Quin was pretty intrigued with these guys too.

We saw a gigantic four metre crocodile (from a distance) and explored a snake house filled with dozens of extremely venomous snakes which totally gave me the heebie-jeebies, even if they were well and truly contained within their glass cages.

Yeah... we ain't holding that one... and he sure ain't holding us!

This is the snake that Reuben held earlier. *shudder*

It was such a fun day out with my boys... Especially Reuben. I am beginning to discover that he responds really well to quality time, and doing something like this where it just us, was really good for both us us. I definitely need to do more of it!

Any outing that ends like this is good with me!

Do you like to take your kids on dates? Any ideas about other places I can take my boys? Would you have held the snake!!??

Meeting Quinten

Please be warned, this post is looooong! And detailed. So if you aren’t into stories of birth, look away now. If you are wanting to read about a really positive birth experience, you’re in the right place! Here goes…

So Reuben was born at 37 weeks gestation, and therefore in my mind, I was pretty well certain that the same thing would happen with baby ‘Tadpole’ too. So when I got to 38 weeks, I started to feel like I was overdue. At my 38 week midwife appointment on Tuesday, everything was going well and just as it should be, and I had to book in my 39 week appointment with an obstetrician. I was told that at that appointment I would have the option to have a stretch and sweep, and I would have to book an induction date. The midwife assured me that I would not HAVE to keep the induction appointment if I didn’t want to, but policy requires one to be booked. I REALLY did not want to have to go to that appointment.

That week was just so hot, back up to the high 30’s in temperature and incredibly humid and I was so uncomfortable, and just really over it. As much as I hated to even think it, I was really over being pregnant. Everything felt like such a big effort – I couldn’t lift up Reuben anymore, and even hanging a load of clothes on the line left me feeling like I needed to go and have a lie down.

On Saturday, I told Pete I wanted to go for a big walk and see if we could get things moving. It was a nice afternoon for it and I quite enjoyed the time out of the house with my family. I had one quite intense contraction when we were just about home and thought we might be onto something but nothing more came of it. While we were out my sister Alexie (who had been present at Reuben’s birth and was planning on coming to Tadpole’s too) rang me and told me that she was planning to come up on the weekend and wait it out.

On Sunday we had a surprise when my Mum & Dad turned up at our church. Unfortunately not enough of a surprise to bring on labour. After church we all went around to my sister’s place and had a lovely family lunch together. Everyone had a stern talking to my belly telling Tadpole that it was time to come out! My parents headed home, and we talked about how funny it would be if things started off after they left and they had to come straight back!

That night, I had a small part of my show. I told Pete that I didn’t think I’d be making it to my obstetrician appointment but it wasn’t the ‘real’ show, so might still be a couple of days.

I started having contractions at around 4am on Monday morning. Even though they were only light (I had had much stronger ones in the past few weeks), I knew instinctively that this was going to be it. I went back to sleep for about an hour, but by about 5.30am my contractions were a regular 10 minutes apart, lasting for over a minute. I woke Pete and told him I was in labour. We rang Alexie to tell her to come over, and to wake up our other sister who was going to be looking after the kids. Pete rang his boss to let her know he wouldn’t be at work, and I rang my mum, who had booked long service leave from when the baby arrived to come up for a while to help me settle in to life with three.

The contractions were reasonably intense from fairly early on. I spent some time in the shower and had a few moments feeling really overwhelmed about everything I knew was coming (why oh why had I watched all those episodes of One Born Every Minute??) After my shower I had a super intense contraction that lasted about 5 minutes (there’s an app for that haha). After that contraction, they went from being 10 minutes apart to 2-3 minutes apart, just like that.

I told Pete that I wanted to wake up the kids and spend some time with them, as I was hyper aware that these were our last hours as a family of four. We went in to Mayana and told her that her brother was going to be born today. She calmly took it all into her stride. The only thing she was worried about it that she hadn’t gotten to draw a picture on my belly yet (something she had done on my pregnant-with-Reuben belly). I told her she could do it now. I found that with the kids up, I was able to deal with the contractions more effectively. Partly because they helped to keep me distracted, and also because I didn’t want them to be scared or worried about me. The kids did their drawings on my tummy between contractions. Bethanie arrived not long before 7am.. I knew that we would probably need to head off soon.

Pregnant bellies make fabulous canvases!

Pete had made the kid’s breakfast, and then rang the hospital to say that we would be coming in soon. He told them that the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart, and that this was our third baby, and that we live half an hour away from the hospital. They told us to get in the car NOW!

We packed everything into the car, took a few last photos of our family of four, one last bump shot, and we were off.

Last bump shot…. taken while in labour!

I got a bit teary leaving the kids. I didn’t know how much Reuben understood of what was going on, and how much his life was about to change. I also was a bit terrified of this car ride, because I remembered how awful it had been the last time! Thankfully my contractions slowed off a little bit while we were in the car, and I only had four during the drive. I asked Pete and Alexie to pray for me and for the labour, and after that I played my “birthlist” playlist through the car stereo, and Pete, Alexie and I sang the hymns I had chosen for the rest of the drive. Singing REALLY helped me to get through contractions; it regulated my breathing perfectly.

After only having four contractions on the half hour drive, it was a bit of a rude shock to have six of them just on the walk into the hospital. The maternity staff were waiting for us and quickly showed us into a birth suite. Pete got my music playing, and we got introduced to the midwife who would be with us, Mel. She asked me to hop up onto the bed to get a trace with the CTG. Oh yuck. When I had Reuben, the midwife let me stay standing for this part and just held the monitors on herself. This time I had to be all strapped up for a couple of contractions. Contracting on the bed, on my back, was no fun at all. While I was there I decided to take the gamble and ask Mel to check how far along I was. My heart sank when she reported that I was only FOUR centimetres. Man! She must have sensed my disappointment, because she quickly told me that even though I was only that far dilated, my cervix was very thin; I was close to being fully effaced. She told me that was a lot of the hard work done, and would probably mean that I would dilate quicker than I might be imagining. I told her that I didn’t want to be on the bed anymore, and she agreed to unhook me from the monitor.

It wasn’t long after that that I felt a fair bit of pressure in my bottom throughout a contraction. I told Mel and she told me just to keep breathing through contractions for a while. She told me it was only half an hour since I had last been checked. I soon felt a trickle down my leg, and assumed that my waters had broken. There was no big gush, but I could feel sticky drips down my legs each time I contracted. I later found out that it wasn’t my waters at all! We think maybe it was part of the show.

Labour kept going, and I mostly dealt with contractions by putting my arms around Pete’s neck and swaying my hips while he coached me to breathe, and told me how great I was doing and how proud he was of me, and Alexie rubbed my back. I went in and out of the shower a few times, but I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I could still feel a lot of pressure, which was quickly morphing into the urge to push. Sometimes I could still feel the pressure between contractions, and in some contractions I could feel my body starting to bear down.

Alexie says that she could tell I was in transition around here. I was starting to feel a bit panicky and could hear my voice getting slightly hysterical as I wailed that I didn’t want to/couldn’t do it anymore. Mel kept asking if I wanted the gas, but that was the one thing I was definitely sure about... no thank you!! I soon began to feel that I couldn’t control the urge to push anymore. I was insisting that my body was starting to push, and if I gave into it during a contraction I felt a lot of relief. Mel agreed to check my progress, so it was back up on the bed for me.

Mel seemed pretty surprised when she told me that I was pretty much fully dilated, with only a small lip remaining! I had progressed by 6cm in just under an hour! Phwoar! No wonder it was hurting so much. Mel asked if she could continue the examination until my next contraction, so she could see what happened with my cervix during it. She also discovered that my waters had in fact not broken, but were bulging, and were stopping the head from fully engaging. If my cervix fully opened up in the next contraction, she said, she would break my waters.

So she’s standing there, with her fingers checking out my cervix, and finishes this spiel by saying, “So, let me know when you can feel your next orgasm starting...” The four of us completely cracked up laughing, and Mel went bright red and apologised and corrected herself... “Contraction!! Contraction!!!” It was a great tension breaker, who’d have thought you could laugh like that in labour. I replied that I wasn’t planning on having an orgasm for a very loooooong time. My next contraction was there before we knew it, and yes, she said I was ready to push and she would break my waters. I TOLD YOU I COULD FEEL PRESSURE!

So, my waters were broken and it was time to push. As I felt the next contraction starting, I closed my eyes and began to bear down. Almost immediately I heard Alexie say, “Ooh! I can see the top of his head” and I felt the baby start to crown. What felt like a split second later, POP! His head was out! It literally felt like it popped, and I opened my eyes in surprise. Alexie, Pete & Mel were all looking at me with faces as shocked as mine felt, and Mel was still pulling her gloves on! There was probably less than 30 seconds before my next contraction, and with that, the rest of our baby’s body was born. It was 9.11am, about an hour and half since we had arrived at hospital. It was unreal. Mel quickly put him on my chest, and he SCREAMED! I think the way he arrived had been as much of a shock to him as it had to me! I couldn’t believe that just like that, he was here. A screaming, slimy, absolutely divinely perfect and beautiful baby son, who looked almost exactly like his big brother. And we were in love.

Peter (as has become our tradition) announced his name: Quinten Jeremiah Erick, and cut the cord and he and Alexie took a thousand photos of Quinten’s first moments. I had a jab in the leg which helped me to deliver the placenta before too long... (oh my goodness I’d forgotten how much relief you feel after the placenta comes away) and we lay there in our newborn bubble while the hospital staff cleaned up around me and did all the things they needed to do. After an examination from the midwife and then an obstetrician it was decided that the tear I had would be capable of healing itself and would not need stitches (PRAISE THE LORD!). Quinten had his first feed – he latched perfectly first go and had a fairly epic feed really, I was most impressed.

My parents arrived at the hospital around this time and we all gooed and gaahed and fell in love. After Quinten had fed, Mel took him over to the baby table to have his jabs, get weighed and measured and dressed. When Quinten was first placed on my chest, I was surprised by how small he was. While I was pregnant, I had thought he was going to be significantly bigger than his brother and sister, but he was so tiny and I thought for sure he’d be another five-pound-somethinger. So I was impressed to hear that he weighed 6lbs 8oz (2.945kg) – almost an entire pound heavier than his big brother had been! He was 48cm long, exactly the same as his big sister.

I told Mel that I wanted to go home that afternoon if it was at all possible and she told me she’d do her best to make it happen. Mama, Papa and Alexie went off to the cafeteria to get themselves some food, while I got to the business of preparing myself to get up off the bed and into the shower. Mel helped me to walk into the bathroom, then left me attempting the toilet while she went to help with the clean up. She was quite surprised when she came back about ten minutes later to find me already showered, dressed and applying makeup. She had a quick chat to me about my labour and told me “it was awesome! That was a really awesome experience,” and that really made my day.

Quinten’s middle name, Erick, is for my dad…

Quinten’s birth experience was amazing. It was incredibly painful and fast-moving and intense, that is for sure – but seriously, giving birth to a little human being is so mind-blowing! Being pregnant one day – uncomfortably so – talking with friends and family about how much we hoped it was going to happen SOON, and then the next day ringing them with the news that our family had a new member... how surreal is that! Plus there’s that whole unleashing of hormones and emotions that leave you feeling all “I-am-woman-hear-me-roar” personified. And on top of all that, we have a new son in our arms.. an absolutely gorgeous and delightful boy who I am enjoying with every part of my being.

I know this has been a long post, filled with too many details, and if you got to the end... well done! I love recording my birth stories, and go back often to read Mayana’s and Reuben’s, reliving the moments and emotions, and it’s important to me to get it all out with everything that I remember. I will write a second post in the next few days about Mayana and Reuben meeting their brother, and our first week at home, but for now I will leave you to enjoy a few pictures of our beautiful baby boy in his first hours Earthside.

Wonderful Weekends {Part Two}

Again with the amazing weather! We decided to make the most of it and do some exploring.

Ever since we’ve moved here, we’ve heard of this place called ‘Utopia’. Young people like to visit it after church, and it’s apparently one of the nicest places in the area. So after nearly three years of living here, we decided it was about time we found it.

My two sisters and brother-in-law joined us for the adventure, and we set off. ‘Utopia’ is actually officially part of the Mount Walsh National Park, and it’s nickname comes from the road you travel down to find it. It’s about an hour’s drive from here, on nice, quiet country roads.

It was certainly worth the drive, and we had a fabulous day in the perfect weather.

Utopia is home to a number of rock-pools and small waterfalls (they may usually be bigger, I don’t know – we haven’t had a lot of rain lately!). It’s about a 1.5km bushwalk up to the rock. The walk is reasonably mild, though steep and rocky in some places. Mayana was was able to walk the majority of the track herself. At the end of the walk you are rewarded with this gorgeousness:

We chose a nice flat section of rock in the sun to have our picnic, then spent some time exploring around the area, and enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

The water was crystal clear, and when you looked into it you could see right to the bottom. It was quite freezing though, and my brother-in-law was the only one brave enough (and appropriately attired) to actually go for a swim. We are all looking forward to heading back when the weather warms up and having a dip!

There was one other group of young people up there, and they were giving us heart-palpitations with their crazy behaviour! Poor Alexie (nurse-in-training) was trying to work out how on earth we would be able to safely get them out of there if someone broke their neck!

Both the kids really loved it, though I was probably quite over-bearing of them. It made me nervous letting them walk around the rocks with such tall drops down into the water, and I wouldn’t let them within at least 5m of the edge! I reminded myself of my mother when we were stopped at the Great Australian Bight on our trek across the Nullarbor!

My brother-in-law carried Reuben in a baby carrier for both legs of the bushwalk, and he was so zonked on the way back that he fell asleep after about 200m of walking!

Mayana walked the whole way back by herself, and was pooped by the time we got back to the car!

We had such a lovely day, and definitely will be back to Utopia sooner rather than later! It’s made me want to do some more exploring and see what other hidden wonders we can find in little corner of the world!

Wonderful Weekends {Part One}

Here in our little corner of Queensland, we have been having a lovely winter. It has been incredibly mild, and I’ve had friends tell me about how confused their gardens are, with flowers and strawberries already producing, thinking that we’ve gone straight into spring!

The past two weekends in particular have been just glorious. We’ve been having super blue-sky days of about 25 degrees, which is the perfect temperature for spending time in the great outdoors.

I ran out of time this week to post about last weekend, so excuse my two-weekend posts this weekend!!

Last weekend we woke up early to a perfect sunshiny day and decided it was too good to waste on housework! We packed up the kids, and headed out for a family breakfast date, then trekked off half an hour away to our nearby beach town, Hervey Bay.

Mayana asked if she could sit up at the breakfast bar looking out into the street, and felt very grown up sitting there by herself, enjoying her raisin toast and “cup-of-chino”.

We found that there was a lovely little markets happening, so we strolled through them before heading out onto the famous, almost one kilometre long, Urangan Pier. The sky was cloudless and brilliant blue, and the ocean looked like it had been sprinkled with glitter. It was glorious. We meandered along, looking into the water for fish and soldier crabs, and enjoyed peeking into the buckets of the fishermen set up for the day at the end of the pier. We felt like we were on holidays.

As we walked back, we had a message from friends who were keen for a spontaneous meet-up, so we spent the next hour or so playing on the beach with them and their kids, chasing soldier crabs, examining sand worms, and jumping in the puddles formed by the ‘potholes’ left behind by the stingrays when the tide is in.

I was amazed by Reuben’s lack of intimidation when playing with the crabs. He had absolutely no hesitation in picking up the soldier crabs and letting them crawl over his hands. Our friend’s six year old son was not so keen on them, and Reuben found it highly entertaining to chase him around holding crab in his outstretched hand. Actually, we all found that pretty entertaining.

It was nice to just step back, and let the kids explore and have fun. My kids don’t often have the chance to get wet and dirty, and they both enjoyed it so much… but especially Reuben. I think just having this huge space that he was free to run in and enjoy was pretty close to one of the best experience he’s ever had, and you couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.

He liked to squat nice and close to the puddles and peer in very intently. Occasionally his face would accidentally dip into the water and he would quickly stand up, blinking up at us with a face that asked, “what just happened?!!”

We wrapped up our fun afternoon with fish and chips (because it’s like a rule that you have to have fish and chips when you go to the beach – especially in Mayana’s mind!!), and then tripped back home for a much needed afternoon rest. It was such a lovely day, and made me want to make a bigger effort to get out there and have fun with the family in our beautiful area more often!

Free Fun for Kids in Brisbane

 

A few weekends ago we went down to Brisbane for the first birthday of our very good friend’s son.

It was a lovely little party, and a lovely time with our friends. We always stay up waaaay too late talking and playing games together. This time they introduced us to Settlers of Catan, which I had heard a lot about from a number of my cousins but hadn’t played before. I LOVED it, it was a lot of fun and I get a lot of pride in saying that I WON my very first game… against my very competitive and strategic husband. I don’t think it was a fluke, but I suppose that remains to be seen!

Anyway. On the Sunday, we decided to take the kids into the city to take in some culture. We initially intended to visit the museum… but we got so caught up in other things that it wasn’t until we were back on the inner city bypass that I said to Pete, “WE DIDN’T GO TO THE MUSEUM!!!!!!!” It was kinda funny.

So where did we go?

Our first stop was the State Library. Do you know I had never been in there before? I was quite impressed really. It’s not anywhere near as grand as the beautiful State Library in Melbourne, but it is more liveable. The one in Melbourne is kind of awe-some (as in you just walk around in awe with wide eyes and an open mouth for most the time – though that could have just been me!!). The one in Brisbane is a place where I’d go just to hang out. You might think a big fancy library like that is a strange place to take your kids, but the Brisbane State Library has an absolutely fantastic children’s area, called The Corner. From what I can gather it has different themes throughout the year, and it is full of activities and fun to be had for pretty much all age groups.

When we were there, it was a music theme. There were huge instruments like a rubber-thong/pvc pipe ‘piano’ (where you whack the ends of the pipe cut to different lengths with a rubber thong to make different notes), and a tea-chest bass. There was a huge soft foam mat, with a great range of instrument-themed baby appropriate toys. Reuben had so much fun on there, and must have played with everything they had! There were a whole stack of different art activities, from etching with carved wooden tiles, to collage, box-art, drawing… pretty much you were only limited by your imagination. It was unreal. Mayana of course spent the longest amount of time there, creating musical instruments out of paper cups and paddle pop sticks and crepe paper. It was loads of fun. There was also video being projected onto the wall of a conductor in front of an orchestra. In front of the wall was a music stand, and to the side was a wardrobe full of cummerbunds, shirtsleeves, bow-ties and batons, so the kids could dress up and conduct their own imaginary orchestra. Mayana thought that was all kinds of wonderful, and Reuben enjoyed playing with the batons that had long pieces of coloured silk attached, and waving them around to the music. In another area there was a mini-disco set up, with a lighted flashing floor, a disco ball and dance music playing. There was marching band outfits complete with strap on bass-drums, and of course, lots of books.

We absolutely loved it. We must have stayed for nearly two hours. We were the first ones there, and we left when it started to feel a bit crowded. On a Sunday morning it did get quite busy, and I’d be interested to see what it would be like mid-week.

We will most definitely be taking the kids back there next time we are in the city!

Our next stop was the Art Gallery. Mayana was far more interested in this than I’d given her credit for. We didn’t look at all the exhibits, but enjoyed what we did see.

Then we popped across the way to GOMA (the Gallery of Modern Art). I had heard that there are free children’s activities there too. At the moment it’s an exhibition called the Gordon Hookey Kangaroo Crew. The exhibition is based on an Indigenous story about a group of kangaroos. When you enter the exhibition you watch an animated version of the story, and then all of the activities available are based on the story. I was impressed with the variety and scope of activities. The main one is to decorate a mask. There are four different types of 3D kangaroo masks to choose from, and once you colour them in and tape them together there’s an area set up like the hills in the story for the kangaroos to play in. Mayana and I had a lot of fun being kangaroos and posing for photos! They also have a bunch of Mac computers, which take you through a process of taking a photo of yourself and creating a magazine cover featuring you (wearing your mask of course!). Next to the computers is a wall of live images of all the magazine coves that have just been created. Mayana was so excited to see hers pop up on the wall! They also had an arcade-gaming section, which just a little too old for Mayana, but it was great to see such a good range of ages catered for.

We had lots of fun, and I think what Mayana liked most about both places was that she got to take something away with her. She’s still talking about it!

We had such a fun time in the arts precinct of Southbank, and I was more than impressed by the initiatives that are available free of charge for families. I can’t wait to take the kids back! If you’re ever in the city, and you haven’t been before, I can’t recommend it more highly!

Have you got any tips for great free places to entertain the kids?

The Ballet {a mama-daughter date}

As you may know, I might be struggling a little with the fact that my little 5lbs2oz bundle of joy is suddenly big enough to be off to ‘big school’ next year…. Blows my mind every time I think about it.

But anyway. I think about this a lot. And think about how short the time of having the opportunity for my kids to be at home with me really is. I am making a much more deliberate effort to enjoy my time with them; making a point of having quality time, playing, laughing, singing, taking them places. Especially my Maysi, because this season is escaping from us so quickly, and I intend to invest a lot of time and loving into her over the next 8 months.

Last night we had our very first Mama-daughter date night. Peter had found out that QPAC (the Qld Performing Arts Centre) had partnered up with a number of regional councils (including ours) for initiative where they live-simulcast certain events to the public for FREE! This year’s even was to be the Bolshoi Ballet and I jumped at the opportunity to take Mayana to something so wonderful.

So after our zumba classes yesterday evening, Mayana and I shoveled down some dinner, dressed ourselves in some warm clothes and gathered an armful of blankets and a chair, and headed off to our simulcast location.

Generally these are held in theatres, but our local theatre had a sold-out concert on last night, so they had to choose a different space, and it ended up being held outdoors, on a large oval by the sea. It was wonderful.

We snuggled into our blankets and kept each other warm, and thoroughly enjoyed the  music and the dancing and the whole experience. Mayana was enthralled, and kept asking me questions about the storyline. Thankfully they had given us a program on arrival and I was able to describe in detail what was going on. She would whisper to me, “Mama! Look how fast they are spinning!” or “look how the can jump and spin at the same time…. do you think I could do that? Can I try real quick?”

We didn’t quite make it to the end of the show… it goes for over 3 hours, and I had to pull the pin on the fun at about 9.45pm… I didn’t know how I would go on the 30minute drive home if we stayed right until the 11pm ending!

On the way home I told her the end of the story and we talked about how these ballerinas were full time dancers, and how they probably started dancing when they were little kids and danced and practiced every single day! Mayana concluded that she only would like to dance for fun, and not be a proper ballerina, but that she sure loved watching them!

I felt like this was such a great initiative, and a fabulous opportunity to give my girl a bit of culture that was light on the hip-pocket, and not something that she can often be exposed to in our little regional town. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the next event like this.. and one day, hopefully, I will be able to take her to the real theatre and we’ll see it all in real life!