The Adventures of Alice and Juliet: High jinx on the rolling seas

It's a charmed life we lead here in Sydney, me hearties. I, and all the other mums we hang out with, have exhausted our coffee budget for the year already, so we have taken to holding mothers groups meetings at people's houses with the host making lunch for everyone. The price of a large coffee and a banana bread in a Clovelly cafe really does go a long way to feeding several women with larger than average appetites. (Indeed, during the Woolworths lamb recall, I was able to swap 4 lamb chops for just 1 grande Starbucks coffee, which made me really question my need for mochas. For about a minute until I remembered that Alice needs the calcium.) Regular followers of Alice's exploits will have seen just how much trouble I did not go to, to provide a TV for the babies last week and dairy free meatballs, in my stint as hostess with the mostess. Today it was Katie's turn and so we all gathered at Rushcutters Bay for a day away from our own sofas. Katie and Luella kindly provided lunch as usual and some extras, such as life jackets for the babies, a skipper come babysitter called Brent, a big boat and Sydney harbour as a backdrop.

I met these lovely ladies under similarly bouncey conditions (see about 19 seconds into this video: http://www.preggibellies.com.au/video/Preggie%20Promo%20big.wmv if you fancy some amusement. Note to aged relatives - neither Alice nor I are in this video, so if you can't work the technology, don't worry about it) so the babies all adjusted quite nicely to the rolling seas, since they were used to the movement. In face, Alice got so far into the rolling spirit that she waited until she had 4 adults sitting around her while she frolicked on a rug and then executed a perfect back to front roll for her audience. As per my previous post, Alice has suddenly become sociable, rather than her usual trend of "going nuclear" when passed around, so we had a lovely day and I was even able to leave her for a couple of minutes to pop down below, which is usually a bit of a trial for all concerned.

The babies were dressed for an arctic expedition, with sunhats, which is quite the winter fashion here. I've taken to popping to the local inconvenince store with Alice first thing in the morning, when it's still chilly, so that she actually gets to wear her coat. At 20 degrees, yesterday again deprived us of the opportunity. Happily we didn't use the baby life jackets, but I suspect that they would have afforded some great comedy value in terms of appearance. Since I can't provide that, here are some comedy sunhats instead.