October 9, 2014

Bronte Beach – I want a house here In March I took Lex to Melbourne to celebrate my Dad’s 70th birthday. It was our first splitting-the-family-in-two adventure. This last weekend, I took Jax to Sydney for a very special wedding and to spend time with awesome friends. Based on both experiences, I have to say, the 1-2-1 adventures are a worthy investment for us. In both cases, I found it an incredibly special time with my little guys. I was it. Their rock in the world. Their number one. For a few days anyway. And it was lovely. The trip with Jax was very different to the one I had with Lex. No farm country and calm family time on this visit. Instead I found myself hanging out with my pudding in so many different situations with people he can’t remember meeting, and observing him in these situations was really insightful. He’s a confident lad our Jaxie, and that’s something I admire so much in him. I hope no one ever crushes it. Uncle Carlos But equally, I’ve never really had too many chances to observe him interacting with people solo – he’s always got Lex backing him up, or they just don’t care who we’re with and piss off. The interesting thing I noticed is Jax gets all super serious and grumpy with new people – until they warm him up and then the game is on. Uncle Gav definitely got special marks in this category, but then he does with all the kids. You gotta love a guy who has that special thing with kids. How beautiful does Annemarie look? Another interesting observation – for us especially – is Jax is pretty cool to take into rather “boring” situations by kids’ standards – you know, the type where you don’t get to move much? For one, he had his first ever official visit to a Church. Not only were we in a Church for the first time, but we were there for two whole hours, and Jax was so cool, he even lay down on the pew for a sleep – awesome. After that, at the reception, he got annoying with his wedding cake obsession, but ultimately, he sat there for quite a few hours while the rest of us talked and drank. Cool! Beyond the wedding, there was a lot of back garden hanging out and again, no worries. The highlight for Jax was 1. There was a dog and 2. On the first night he got to build and maintain a fire. In fact, he enjoyed his fire so much, we ended up setting up a bed next to it, which meant I could take him to bed when I was ready to go. As we say in our house – I’ll ‘av some of that. Bed by the fire For me, it was incredibly lovely being in Sydney and sharing it with Jax. I love that town, but it is the friends’ there that make it a super special place. It was gorgeous watching them really speaking with and working hard to connect with Jax, because let’s face it, a sign of great mates is a genuine interest in developing their own relationships with your kids. I always walk away from Sydney feeling whole and usually with a good abdominal work-out due to excessive laughter. I always need a good dose of that, especially as life can get just a little too serious sometimes. Unfortunately, there are always so many people I don’t get to see, and I made a fundamental error this time. I communicated my travel plans with the very un-socially savvy Lorna. Bless that woman, but try getting her on Facebook. Not her forte. Maybe I should run my social media workshop with her? Nah, it wouldn’t work. Uncle Gav and Libby We’re back in the mesh of life again, with the boys back at school, us at work. But it was a really lovely time with the Jaxster and he seemed to enjoy it. With that said, he was definitely happy to come home again (“I don’t want to travel to Australia anymore Mum, let’s go back to Singapore”), only because he missed Lex desperately – you should’ve heard the phone calls – very cute. But separating them seems to be a good and healthy experience for all of us and I reckon we’ll keep up the trend. Now I’ve got to start planning my next trip with Lex. Where should I take him? Or maybe it’s Steve turn to take the boys on separate adventures? Yeah, that’d be fair. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to hang out with us and for going the extra mile to make it special, especially the addition of compulsory Lady Edwardia goodies. Much appreciated. So anyone else do the separate kids adventure thing? Yours, without the bollocks Andrea