Well here we are in 2011, can you believe it? Looking back on 2010 one thing that strikes me is that I sadly neglected my blog last year. I want to do better this year but I won’t promise anything. I will just say that I will try.
2010 was an eventful year for us. We were granted our Permanent Residence in Australia and we welcomed a beautiful new grandson into our family. The first event hardly made any difference to our everyday lives, except that we now have our Medicare cards and have access to the health service. People have remarked that it would make a big difference to our lives but as we are hardly every ill it has made no noticeable difference but it is good to know that we will get assistance if we should ever be sick and that although we are not yet able to take out Australian citizenship we have been accepted to live here permanently and unless we do something really horrendous we will be allowed to stay. That is reassuring.
The second event, the birth of our grandson Nathan Dominic, has made a great deal of difference to our lives. He is a beautiful child, so happy and friendly. He is now the centre of all family gatherings, everyone vying for a turn to hold him. His cousins, Claudia 16 and Lauren 13 think they have been given a real live baby doll and love to play with him. He really made my Christmas this year. For a change the whole family came to our house, we usually go to my son Jace and his wife Siân but we decided to be different this year. All the old ladies who I care for kept telling me that it would be special as it was his first Christmas but I was not so sure. I thought he would love the wrapping paper but I did not expect him to be old enough to really enjoy Christmas.
I appliquéd his name on a bath towel for him and bought him a little suit. Both good practical presents and I really wanted to give him something impractical but looking around the toyshops just made me feel very despondent. Everything just seemed too big or too silly or too cheaply made. I was beginning to despair of ever finding the ‘right’ toy for him. A few days before Christmas I dragged Jonny off to Toys R Us, one of the largest toy shops in town. We walked up and down the aisles, examining shelves and shelves of toys. Some were too old for him, some were for girls, some he already had, some were way out of our price range and some were just ridiculous. Then Jonny spied it - a little engine. It was make of plastic, which we had said we did not want, it was battery operated another thing we did not want but it was noisy, which we had said we wanted. When one pressed the top of the funnel it played a little tune, whistled and chugged and lit up as it moved forward. We were enchanted and decided that if Nathan did not like it we would give it a good home.
When his Mum unwrapped it for him on Christmas day, his eyes just lit up and as it chugged cheerfully along the ground he was off after it, trying to catch it up. He was having such fun with it. That really made my day. I suppose he will grow out of it pretty soon but just seeing his look of delight when he first set eyes on it was worth all the tea in China. Now I have to start looking for something that will get the same reaction for his birthday at the beginning of February.
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