Baby Steps

Literal baby steps: Lucy took a couple steps today without holding on to our hands. It was so great to see her amazement, or maybe it was our own amazement reflected back at us. And something about the arrangement--us on the floor ready to catch her and her toddling between us--made me think those first steps are all of parenting in a microcosm. The bittersweet thrill of letting go and seeing your child negotiate the world on their own in ever new ways.

Metaphorical baby steps: we are slowingly settling in. We moved into our house on Saturday (as requested by Ed, visuals will be posted) which turns out to be a ski chalet. We live in a neighborhood of incredibly quaint Victorian cottages (I'll post pictures of the neighborhood soon), but we live in a 1970s Tahoe-style ski chalet. When I went to see the place last week I was heartened to find a beautiful and abundant lemon tree in the back patio, but when we showed up Satrurday morning, the landlord mentioned that the gardener had been around "to tidy up a bit," and all that was left of the lemon tree was a hacked-up skeletal trunk. No leaves and no lemons and barely any branches to speak of. I took it kind of hard and spent a chunck of Saturday feeling really bad for myself that I lived a gazillion miles from home in a ski chalet with no lemon tree in the back patio. All those empty white walls and the grey wet sky outside made me feel very homesick. But things have improved considerably. I bought flowers and found a framed Matisse print at the thift store. And we got out of the house. Sunday was cool but dry and we went to a local ecological park called Ceres. It's a lovely place stocked with Aussie neo-hippies, compost toilets, solar power, a nursery of indigenous plants, a cafe serving surprisingly tasty organic food, much of it grown in the communal garden, expansive play areas, a mock Indonesian village and tons of chickens (except they are usually called "chucks" here). And lots of signage explaining how to live a more ecologically senstive life. It was great. It felt like we were in Santa Cruz. And we have also begun meeting a few people, which helps. Our landlords are a couple who live across the street, and they are both really lovely. They have a couple of chucks and some bunnies in the back yard, and inside four boys between the ages of 7 and 14. Jake went over and found boy heaven: multi-artillery warfare, legos, snacks, and piles of Tin Tin books. The best thing about losing the house we'd originally planned on renting is that the people who live there are also great and have been incredibly welcoming (that and the fact that the ski chalet is two and half blocks from Jake's school). Louise invited me to go out with her "Mums Group" last night, which is 5 or 6 women whose kids go to Princes Hill Primary and who go out drinking on Sunday nights after the kids go to bed. It was great fun being out with them yucking it up in a pub. But nothing has softened our landing here more than having our friend Kim (from Wesleyan) living here with her husband Llewellyn and their son Jarrah. Their presence and abiding friendship has warmed the winter and made the ski chalet feel like home.