Change In Plans

THE LITTLEST HIKER - YESTERDAY IN THE SUNSHINE

Greetings from Lord Howe Island.  It is a(nother) rainy day, and we are waiting for our early-afternoon flight back to Sydney.  The kids are watching “Dr. Doolittle,”  (the Eddie Murphy version rather than the Rex Harrison version) and giggling and cackling away. India and I are packing and talking.

Since we left South Africa, the specialized vocabulary of the family has changed again.  Some of the phrases which have come into frequent usage are:

“A dingo stole my baby!” - None of us has actually seen the old Meryl Streep movie, but the kids find it very amusing to say. When we were at the sheep station, Ian and Di gave us the details of the actual case, back in the early 1980s,  and talked about why it sort of traumatized Australia.  When we were in Tasmania, we all inserted the wilder marsupials (echidna, thalycine, pademelon) for the word dingo.  My favorite is “A wombat stole my baby!”

“Stop calling me mate!” - Tallulah quickly got tired of me imitating an Australian accent and addressing her with the universal Australian term of endearment.  I have stopped calling her mate.

“That’s one …” - We have tried to integrate a parenting technique, called (cheesily enough), 1-2-3 Magic!  Basically, instead of debating or discussing undesired behavior, it means just saying “That’s one…,” followed by two and three if necessary.  When you get to three, some agreed punishment, usually a lost privilege or time out, happens automatically.  It has worked amazingly well.

“Just another wombat”- when we were in Tasmania, we were seeing so many animals that we all got a little blase about them.  We spent a lot of time trying to see a platypus and a Tasmanian Devil in the wild.  Whenever we saw something that got our hopes up, but turned out to be a wombat, pademelon, wallaby, kangaroo, or possum, the kids would say “Oh well, just another _______.”  It is amazing how quickly something becomes the new normal.

“I come from a land down under” - India bought a 5-CD “Greatest Hits from the 1980s” collection at a petrol station,  on the drive between Sydney and Melbourne.  This resulted in a lot of bad parental singing along, and a stream of recollections that our children found uninteresting.  Zola really liked the Men at Work Australian classic, and even had me look up the lyrics on Google as we drove.  He sings it over and over.  Tallulah is partial to The Proclaimers, “I Would Walk 500 Miles,” and insists that she and I will walk 500 miles over the summer, so she will get a special hiking patch from her day camp.

“Josh?  Josh, where are you?” - I made the mistake of describing the movie “Blair Witch Project” to Zola during a hike one day.  He loves to work himself into being scared of abstract dangers (which is also why we spend so much time talking about snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc.).  Now, every few days, usually when we are outside, he will goof around by getting a worried look on his face, and shouting for Josh.

“Are we leaving today?” - Tallulah has gotten in the habit of saying this every morning.  Regardless of the answer, she then says, “I want to stay here for six mornings!”  Always six mornings, even when we were at the roadside motel in Narooma.  She seems happy wherever she is.

Off to the air strip (one minute away), for the flight back to Sydney.