Destined to hate school holidays forever...

It seems as though my life is going through the 7 stages of school holidays - just a theory I have come up with. It goes as follows:

Stage 1 School Days - You count down to the school holidays and can't wait - they are great!

Stage 2 - Uni Days - School holidays mean uni holidays and that means extra work which means extra cash - Yay!

Stage 3 - Working days (pre-children) - School holidays mean no traffic on the roads and a trip that would normally take 45 mins takes around 15. Downside - all the people at work with kids get preference for holidays at this time - but who would want to take holidays on school holidays right?

Stage 4 - The Toddler years - What the? All toddler related activities come to a dead holt on school holidays. How on earth am I going to entertain my 2 year old for the next two weeks!!!

Stage 5 - The school years when you are the parent - how on earth are we going to do this - getting time off from work is impossible and everyday costs a fortune! Send them back to school!

Stage 6 - The grandparent years - OMG My children are dumping their kids on me now and stage 4 just repeats all over again!!!

So as far as I can tell - it doesn't get any better from here on in....


What brought all this on?

The insanity of Jimmy Giggle at Westfield this morning.

What was I thinking!!!!

(Apparently he is hot...who would have thunk it!)

A New Library Experience

The local government run libraries here in Canberra are pretty good for an outing with the toddler - every now and again. There are other more 'active' activities that I would rather do with H boy. Now at 38 1/2 Weeks pregnant - I just don't have the stamina to do those 'active' activities. So this morning we went along to story time at the library. We went to the newest library in Canberra which is located in the trendy suburb of Kingston - all cafe's, boutiques and hairdressers. I wasn't sure what I was expecting - your typical local library I assume - but I was wrong.

Last night when I was looking up the address of this library I noticed on the ACT libraries website that the Kingston library was considered under the terminology of "Shop Front Library". I didn't think much of it at the time. I just thought they had converted a few old shops into a standard library - but no.

It really was like a small shop with books up and down all the walls and some computer terminals in the centre. All they needed was a guy up the back serving coffee and it would have been a book store.

These pictures do in fact make it look quite spacious - and you think that the back of the room might open out into something bigger. But No - that is it.

Although I am liking the concept, there seemed to be a few pro's and con's to this library model.

Pro's
It was a good way to really 'see' the books available. Sometimes I find that in the bigger libraries the books can actually be difficult to find.

The locality was really good - I love that you can be out for a coffee and drop into the library and pick up a book or two at the same time. Very user friendly

Con's


There were probably about 15 - 20 people in there when we went in this morning and it felt cramped. That may well have just been me taking up the space of two people or the fact that there isn't really room for a pram (or3) in there as well as that many people.

The concept of the 'shop front' library model is to be able to offer the same community services as other less centrally located libraries - except that as there isn't really a 'dedicated' children's space in this library due to size limitations. Add 8- 9 under 5's plus their mums and the few prams and you get one very uncomfortable space. Again- this may have just been how I was feeling due to taking up more room than normal.

Storytime is on at all local Canberra libraries on different days throughout the week. See website for more information.

The Weekend Outing

I try very hard to find us something to do as a family each weekend.

The rules are:

- It must be free or cost very little
- It must involve something that 'exercises' the little one
- It must be something that has something for everyone in the family.

Strangely enough it is the last criteria that is the hardest to fit. I am easy to please - I just like to get out of the house. Harris is fairly easily pleased - as long as there is something interesting to look at - it is the Husband who is most difficult to please!

We are very lucky in Canberra to have so many beautiful National monuments to visit - many of which are free. However, Canberra is also very good at putting on an open day. Almost every weekend there is something on somewhere!

Today we went to the Snowy Hydro Southcare Base Open Day.

There was a helicopter for the kids to climb in (the line was far too long for this pregnant mama to stand in - so we just looked)

 

Plenty of things for kids to look at: Motorbikes, Firetrucks, Model Aeroplanes. They even had helicopter joy flights that were very reasonably priced - although we didn't partake.

We were far more interested in the firetruck!

Put the purse down and step away from the credit card...

I have been doing some damage these past few days on the old Credit card - mainly buying frivolous things like domain names.

I also decided to treat myself to a new bag purchased online from the US because it is SOOO much cheaper than here right now (Well always cheaper but with the strong AUS dollar I feel justified in saying SOOO much).

I can barely believe it but I decided that I may need to start carrying a backpack (eek - yes you heard correctly) when I have two little ones to worry about. The thing is - I wanted it to be a stylish backpack and not necessarily massive - just enough for a few essentials. I'm talking quick trip to the shops rather than out all day kind of bag. So this is what I splurged on:

Source

Pretty good as far as backpacks go I think. I just wanted something that didn't fall down whenever I bent over to put a child in the car or to pick a child up.

Harris has been quite obsessed with the Bus lately so I arranged with a friend to take him and her little one who is the same age on a bus trip this morning. I couldn't take any pictures because my phone battery died but they had a ball.

We caught the local bus that went all through the surrounding suburbs and then got off at the local Westfield for a coffee and a play, then came home again.

It was a cheap outing and the level of excitement had by the small ones was worth it.