This past Saturday Jeremiah planned a bike ride from our house (sea level) up to Gebbies Pass, along Summit Road and down Dyers Pass. I don’t know how many feet of elevation it is, but the route went along the top of the port hills up to 480 meters with panoramic views. I actually got off my bike and walked a section near the top, but Jeremiah resolutely pedaled on all the way to the summit, towing Milo behind him. Phew! Then he blasted down Dyers pass at over 45 kilometers per hour, Milo snoozing the whole way. Now Jeremiah is sitting on the couch watching you-tube videos about extreme biking and epic bike trips, plotting our next adventure.

Mondays after work Milo and I have a standing play-date with Canadian friends Jen and her son Tristan. Last week we met at Hagley park to crunch the fall leaves that are thick under the big deciduous trees in the arboretum. On the way back we walked through the NZ garden, and I don’t know what this plant is dwarfing the boys, but it sure is impressive!

For some reason, Milo and Tristan can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Milo will randomly (and silently) run up, bear hug and tackle Tristan. Tristan then responds with a predictable (and must be highly pleasing) high pitched “No Milo!” and the Moms break it up. Then Milo might run past Tristan, who sticks out a hand, swiping Milo. Milo will retaliate with a shove, eliciting another “No Milo” and shove in return. And on and on it goes. I wonder what would happen if the Moms didn’t interfere. I imagine there would be some tears, some bruises, and eventually a pecking order would develop that needed few challenges to maintain. Amazingly, they both still like each other. Here each boy has a niche in this giant “gum tree,” a species of Eucalyptus, far enough away from each other to avoid the inevitable squabbles.

This past weekend we got together with Tristan’s parents for a walk at a park, starting with an adventure playground. The flying fox was a hit!

A door in the woods. There’s no fence it passes through, just a lintel and a door, red on one side and bright purple on the other. It’s actually really interesting to watch our group pass this part of the trail. We hiked with two extra kids, ages 8 and 6, and all the kids (including Milo and Tristan) instinctively passed through the door, closing it behind them. The adults walked around. Something about the vivid colors and absurdity of a door to nowhere appealed to the kids’ imagination, but as adults I guess our minds are elsewhere. Shame.

The dads passed through the door on request, to pose for a picture.  Milo’s out cold.

Milo is posing with the Summerfield girls (a lovely British family in our neighborhood) and Tortoise.  They’re all sporting their actor-signed programs! 

This evening Milo put his giraffe on the potty to go pee, wrapped it in a blanket and put it to bed in his room, closing the door so it was nice and dark and urging us with finger to lip to be quiet–his baby was sleeping. My heart thumped with maternal pride as I imagined what a tender and caring big brother he’ll be some day. Later Daddy played the crocodile and came looking for the giraffe to eat, and Milo and I hid him somewhere safe to save him from the crocodile. Then Jeremiah told Milo that crocodiles eat baby giraffes, and Milo carefully brought out his baby and laid it in front of the hungry crocodile, without a hint of regret or sorrow.  Ach!  Hum, I guess that next child had better beware after all.

You know you’re walking in tree-less terrain when your son starts using cow plops as landmarks! Poop is something we talk about a lot right now, mainly because we’d really like Milo to put his own in the potty rather than in his undies. Animal poop seems to be a particular interest of Milo’s, and on our walk today we encouraged him onward by pointing out several sizable specimens. Milo and I went walking with our friend Jennifer (Jeremiah is out hunting this weekend) on a path along Pigeon Bay, out on the Banks Peninsula towards Akaroa. It’s all steep pasture for cattle and sheep now, though at one time it was woods.

There’s something about a wrinkled towel that Milo finds irresistible. He spent a good 20 minutes this evening going round and round the thing, tugging out the corners, smoothing out the sides, trying to get it to lay perfecting flat, while panting and huffing with the effort. He worked on it for quite a while upside-down before he decided to flip it over. And he didn’t want any help–when we asked he just said “Me!” and gestured with a waving hand for us to keep away. Hopefully this bodes well for tidy bed-making in the future….

It was the worst ever spot prize, that fuzzy barbie-pink heart shaped pillow with Betty Boop in all her busty glory embroidered on the front. I almost declined it right then and there, but Milo took a fancy to it and hugged it to his chest protectively. It became the pillow that cradled his head every night….his “stinky” pillow (he misunderstood when I told him it was “skanky,” instead waving his hand in front of his wrinkled nose and pronouncing it “tinky”).

A week ago we decided to give the pillow a new lease on life, reusing just the stuffing to fill the new turtle pillow. I now have a new appreciation for those hand-sewn honey-comb quilts our great grandmothers used to make! Not that I hand-sewed this one, but the piecing was finicky enough even with a machine. Still well worth it. Milo loves it at least as much as Betty Boop….which is saying something.

Adrenaline forest….from the name I guess I’d expect a muddy dirt bike track weaving in and out of trees, but a high ropes course isn’t too far off. On Saturday a group from the social club at Jeremiah’s company (BECA) got together to play on the course. After a 10 minute tutorial from a staff member (filled with admonishments such as “You want to make sure you’re clipped in,” and “you don’t want to do that, OK!” ), we were released to our own devices. Those green crash pads are at the end of the “flying foxes” (we call them zip lines at home), since they have no brakes.

The ropes course was set up in a planted mature stand of pines on the northeast side of the city.  Multiple layers of platforms, ladders, and crisscrossing lines make it feel like the Swiss Family Robinson.  The “challenges” were creative, punctuated with zippy rides on the flying foxes, and despite the relatively short safety briefing, if you followed the rules about staying clipped in to the safety lines, the worse you were going to get was a pinched finger.  Jeremiah and I took turns staying down below with Milo, who was a surprisingly good sport about not being invited to join Mama and Daddy on the giant playground for grown-ups. 

This is about as high off the ground as the little squirt got, but he was happy to putter around beneath us, playing with the pine needles, finding mushrooms, and eating snacks (NOT the mushrooms).

There were 6 courses in the park, and each one got higher than the next, and slightly more challenging. Here Jeremiah’s on a flying fox way up in the tree tops.

Here’s Jeremiah shuffling along a high wire 70 feet off the ground. The breeze picked up, making the trees sway a bit, but they moved surprisingly little for such tall straight pines.  Neither of us are bothered by heights, so it was a fun day.

Last Sunday Jeremiah went up to Kaikora with some guys to take a charter boat out for some sea fishing. There’s an incredibly deep ocean trench just a couple kilometers off the coast at Kaikora, so boats can go deep sea fishing without actually going that far out. Brrr, it was a brisk morning up there with new snow on the mountains. Winter is a-coming.

Most of these crayfish had to be dropped back into the ocean to grow some more, but each member of the party did get to keep one.

Fish, Milo says. Look at his mouth. Jeremiah brought back a “crayfish” (as they call these clawless lobsters here) and it fidgeted around in the pot trying to kick the lid off before we heartlessly steamed it alive. I remember Uncle Stewart bringing back lobsters to cook at Cape Cod when we were little. I remembered the horror of cooking the critters alive so vividly that I didn’t eat lobster until I visited Maine as a hard and calloused adult. Milo had absolutely no such qualms, and no sympathy for the live (or dead) lobster. I hope he turns out all right…..

The hubbies went out charter fishing and us wives had a left-behind-party with the kids. Really, just a trip to Willowbank nature preserve with a special coffee thrown in. Look at the long-suffering patience of those donkeys. The kids stuck flowers behind their ears, pulled their tails, petted their necks and squealed in their ears, but they never even flinched. it was impossible to get a photo with everyone looking, so we just settled for one with almost everyone present….including nine-year-old Joe whom I had to manhandle into the frame.

Look at this cool cat. The girls were getting decked out with marigolds behind their ears, so Milo wanted one too, then he sauntered around nonchalantly with his hands in his pockets, practicing looking hip.