After hearing them sing about "walking in the city" on Play School often enough, Tilly has been really keen to go to the "city". Also, once a week we always drive over the Harbour Bridge and along the Cahill Expressway where we get a good chance to look at the ferries on the harbour. So she has been keen to go on a ferry too. So last Friday, I decided to treat her to a trip to the city.
We took a bus into town which she really enjoyed. I had Noname with us (Noname is the name she calls my Mum. It's a long stroy, but Mum wouldn't commit to a name like Grandma etc and so ended up with Noname, we thought Tilly's first attempt at saying it might come out as "Nona" or something but no, Tilly said it perfectly first time!) which was a great help. We took the pram and the sling thinking that both would be useful.
When we arrived we stopped at Euro Cafe (where I used to work in my early 20s) and had iced chocolates made with chocolate gelato. Yum Yum. Unfortunately Tilly was feeling unwell and didn't have anything and Frankie had a huge breast feed and proceeded to projectile vomit it all over the pram and the floor.
Never to be deterred we continued on, down to Circular Quay where we deliberated on where to take a ferry to. What we should have done was just take a round trip somewhere and then head straight back home, but we wanted to make an outing of it. I thought I remembered that there was a kid friendly pirate exhibition at the National Maritime Museum and Tilly likes pirates, so we caught a ferry to Darling Harbour, which I've always considered to be a bit of a white elephant, but we went anyway.
The ferry ride was fun and Tilly loved it. We sat outside on the side and it was really pleasant. It went the long way round so we got a bit of a joy ride out of it.
But when we got to Darling Harbour we had to walk across a great big huge footbridge to get to the other side where the Maritime Museum was. Poor Tilly, she really did very well. Once we got there we discovered that the pirate exhibit had finished. Fortunately Tilly was happy enough to wander through the gift shop where they were still selling pirate paraphanalia. We decided to go to a restaurant for lunch and as we were waiting for our meal to come Tilly said "I feel sick", climbed on to my lap and fell asleep in an instant. Obviously Frankie decided that that was the right time for a feed, so we managed to get Tilly into the pram (which she is really to big for) when the food arrived, so Mum chopped up my steak into bight sized pieces for me and we managed to get through lunch.
The next challenge was to get home. With Tilly asleep in the pram and Frankie snuggled into the sling we really were not going to be able to tackle any stairs, or catch any old style buses where the pram has to be folded. We ended up catching the monorail, which was like a little heat capsule and then fortunately Tilly woke up, as all the buses home were old style. I had to ride standing up all the way, with Frankie in the sling and gripping on to Tilly's arm. Mum was wrangling the pram. A man offered for Tilly to sit on his lap, which I promptly declined! I mean, even if his intentions were good, did he really think I would accept??
Oh, and I forgot to mention that it was a really hot day!! So hot that I had to stop at a shop and buy a cheap skirt to wear as the trousers I had on were becoming unbearable.
It was fun to have an outing, but I sure was glad to get home.