When I carried Madeleine into her playroom at 6.30 on the morning of her second birthday party she breathed “The park!” in wide-eyed wonder. I put her little sock-feet down on the grass where she was used to feeling floor-boards and she slowly spun around, taking in my dodgily-drawn toadstools, wonky painted fir trees and floppy crepe-paper grass. “Wowwww. The park!” she whispered. And just like that I felt like Picasso.

Winter in Melbourne means Madeleine will probably always have her birthday parties indoors. But she loves – she really loves – the park. So we created the a picnic-in-the-park party for her in our home. It wasn’t that difficult, or that expensive, and I imagine you could make this bringing-the-outside-in scheme work for all kinds of woodsy party themes, like a teddy-bears’ picnic, a fairy kingdom, or a woodland creatures party.

1. On a budget

Most of our decorations were home-made for just the cost of cardboard, paint and some masking tape; or found around the house:

* A back-drop of fir-trees painted onto butchers’ paper

* A green trim of crepe-paper grass around the skirting boards

* Red and white toadstools painted onto cardboard and stuck around the room

* Cardboard cut-outs of bees, butterflies and ladybirds, also stuck around the room

* Blue and white cardboard clouds, strung from door frames and other high places

* Red and white polka dot paper cups and plates

* Red and white paper bunting, on loan from the lovely lady at Mint Jelly

* Autumn leaves, collected from the park with Madeleine several weeks earlier

* A picnic rug

* Two fibre-glass toadstool stools, on loan from my Mum

2. A little bit more

If you can spend just a little more, helium balloons will always be well appreciated by little ones. We (and by we I mean my generous parents who wouldn’t let me pay them back) purchased a helium kit from Spotlight. I chose to use only yellow balloons as I wanted to create a “sunny sky” effect and blue would have made the room too dark (that’s why the clouds were partly blue instead). I dangled some of the bees, butterflies and ladybirds I had made from the balloons, to make it look as though they were flying around the room. As you can imagine, these were very popular.

3. Your one extravagance

Our one big splurge was three sheets of 1m x 3m synthetic grass, and we went back and forth in the lead-up to the party as to whether or not we would go there. Originally, I thought my idea to use the synthetic grass was genius. I figured that off-cuts would be a super-cheap, easy way to create a “wow factor” in the room (I REALLY wanted to earn that soft “Wow” from Madeleine), and make it a snatch to clean up. I was right about the wow-factor, and the easy clean-up. But this grass is surprisingly expensive. At one point, we were thinking it would be cheaper to just lay real turf in the playroom!

In the end we decided to go ahead and get the grass because we would use it afterwards in our courtyard, to create a bit of a softer, ‘garden’ area for the children to play until we could afford to pull up the tiles out there and landscape (that could be years).

So there you have it. Madeleine’s “winter woodland picnic” themed birthday party. Games were mostly parallel play (because have you ever tried to get a bunch of two-year-olds to do the same thing when you want them to?), with a bit of stop-start dancing and a mini treasure hunt thrown in. Add some cake and chocolate and surprisingly-popular healthy snacks into the mix, and your party is done and dusted, right there.

Day 1, Good Friday

7am: Have woken up thinking about my sister Emily. Daddy said she would be here when I woke up. Must go check. Need to get out of this cot pronto. Mummmy! MUMMMMYYYY!

7:03am: Mummy, you took ages to get here. Is Emmy here? She is? Hooray! She got in at 2am? Well then I imagine she will be ready to play by now. I’ll just run down to her bedroom and check. Emmmy! EMMMMYYYYY!

7:06am: I’m a bit over playing the “let’s pretend to sleep” game, Emmy. Think I will eat some breakfast instead. Is it Chocolate Egg Day yet? Mummmy? MUMMMMYYYY!

7:07am: Oh listen to that, Harry’s awake. I wonder who woke him up.

10:30am: We are going for a walk in the RAIN. This is very exciting. I will wear my rain coat. NOBODY HELP ME I WANT TO CARRY THE UMBRELLA ALL BY MYSELF. Why are complete strangers ducking and weaving away from me?

2:30pm: Hot cross buns are my favourite.

4pm: We are painting eggs. RED! I WANT RED PAINT! Wait, Daddy has blue. That’s it, BLUE! I WANT BLUE! Emmy, what colour do you have? Green? THAT’S THE ONE I WANT. I WANT GREEN. Mummy, stop trying to help, I can do it myself.

3.15pm: THERE IS GREEN PAINT ON MY HAND HELP HELP GET IT OFF GET IT OFFFFFFF.

Day 2, Saturday

12pm: Grace and Kiera are here and we are having an Easter Egg hunt. I don’t know what that means but I am VERY EXCITED. Aaaaargh this is very excellent, I am going to run as fast as I can on the spot and yell “yeah.” YEAH.

12:05pm: We are in the courtyard. There are chocolate eggs here. OH MY GOODNESS THERE ARE CHOCOLATE EGGS EVERYWHERE IN THE COURTYARD I KEEP FINDING THEM EVERYWHERE I LOOK THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

12:07pm: FRENZY! FRENZY!

12:10pm: Chocolate Easter eggs are my favourite.

12:11pm – 3:30pm: Chocolate, toys, games, friends. Grace is 11 and she lets me boss and drag her around everywhere I think I will kiss her. Lunch, toys, games, friends. I will drag Grace into the hall and make her pretend to be a puppy with me. Peppa Pig! I SKIPPED MY NAP. BAHAHAHA. Dessert, toys, games, friends. Grace is tired, I wonder why? I will sit on her lap and call her mummy. Chocolate!

4:05pm: I am feeling a little bit delirious. Think I will do a spot of spinning in the lounge room in front of all my friends. I keep falling over. I don’t care. Delirious! Frenzy! Frenzy!

Day 3, Easter Sunday

7:03am: CHOCOLATEEEEEEE. The Easter Bunny left chocolate in my bedroom! I am so happy. This is the best morning of my life.

7:08am: WHYYYYYYYY? Why can’t I eat my chocolate for breakfast? This is the worst morning of my life.

10:20am: We are walking so that Harry can sleep in the pram and Mummy can get coffee. Why does she always say she needs coffee? I don’t understand.

12pm: Mummy and Daddy found the Taco Truck, I found a park with swings and a slide. Harry is still asleep. We are all very happy.

12:03pm: Oh look! I found more Easter Eggs hidden at the bottom of the slippery slide! Hooray!

12:04pm: WHYYYYYYY? Why can’t I eat food I randomly found on the ground of a deserted and slightly derelict-looking park?

2:30pm: I’m not even tired I definitely don’t need a nap. Oh wow, Daddy is cuddling me on Mummy and Daddy’s bed! This is so much fun. Daddy wants to sleep but I will never sleep. I am going to play and make him laugh, it will be so much fu– zzzzzzzzzz.

4:30pm: Mummy why are you waking us up? I don’t want to get up. Ooh a bottle! I will let you give that to me and read me a story while I drink it, if it makes you happy.

6pm: We are going out for a night-time picnic. And Emmy is coming too. This is CRAZY good. We are outside, walking, and it’s dark! I can’t believe my eyes! It’s dark! I must keep reminding Mummy how amazing this is. I will say “Night night!” every few seconds, to make sure she doesn’t forget. Now I will tell Emmy “Night night” too, in case she hadn’t realised.

6:20pm: The park! The park! I love the park, and now we are in the park. At NIGHT. The park, at NIGHT! Wowwwwww!

7:01pm: We are on our way home. In the dark. At NIGHT. In the dark. We have been in the park. At NIGHT. This is the best night ever. I am never going to sleep again.

ps. Madeleine’s previous diary entry

People are always talking about how folks have become desensitised in this day and age. (Did I really just type “in this day and age”? What am I, 80?) We are told that computer games, the nightly news, the Internet and goodness knows what else have made us impervious to the true horrors of war, to the complex realities of love, to the fact that the kid who rode his bike into a duck pond on Funniest Home Videos actually hurt himself.

In my case, I can add to that list “amazing feats of strength and skill and cheating death.” If you show me acrobatics on television, for example, I’ll say “Wow” but I’m not really there, if you know what I mean.

You can’t be desensitised inside the Spiegeltent. It is all just too close, too intimate. You can actually hear the artists hold their breath before a particularly difficult lift. You can see the sweat of effort trickling between their shoulder-blades. At one point, during which two acrobatic artists on roller-skates defied gravity in a terrifying spin, I whispered to Tons, “These seats may actually be a bit too good.” Because if just one thing went wrong, the both of them could have hurtled into our laps at 100 kilometres an hour.

Empire calls itself “a love letter from New York City.” Inspired by the vintage days of vaudeville, it is a no-holds-barred performance. Announcements are made before the start of the show to the effect of “Please do not use flash photography or you will kill our artists.” And that pretty much sets the tone. The acrobats defy death and wonder and creativity and dreams. The singer belts out those notes. The audience has goose bumps. That drag-queen comedy duo did NOT just say that (they did). They did NOT just do that (they did). We are roaring with laughter one moment and biting our lips the next.

In the finale act a man slowly, painstakingly, balances a feather on a stick. Then he balances the feather and stick on another stick. And so on and so on, each stick getting bigger and bigger. The whole process takes forever. You’d think it would be boring, but the suspense is palpable, and the entire room is on the edge of its seat.

Desensitised? We are the opposite of desensitised. We are inside the performance, every one of us terrified, willing him not to drop that feather. The applause when he lifts that precariously-balanced, complex weave of sticks and single feather into the air is thunderous. It sounds crazy when I write it but you really had to be there.

Honestly, you did have to be there. If you haven’t seen Empire yet, it runs in Melbourne until 30 March. If you get a chance to go along, take it! You’ll love every one of the 90 minutes. (Just leave the kids at home, those jokes are not for the little ones). Tickets are on sale here.

In the interests of full disclosure, you should know I received the tickets to see Empire free of charge. But I was under no obligation to write kindly about it, or indeed to write about it at all. They didn’t even ask me to. That I did willingly because this show was amazing. Thank you Spiegelworld!

Here’s a sneak preview of the show. And remember, this is the Spiegeltent. So as close as those cameras appear to be, that’s how close you’ll be too. Yikes!

Update: I’ve just been told the show has been extended to 11 May 2014.

↑↑ We arrived just as the sun set and the band was warming up, so we were all over the marching and dancing right away. Madeleine busted her best “twirl” moves, which made forward motion somewhat challenging, so I had to keep picking her up and running through the grass to catch up with everyone else.

↑↑ Back at the cemetery gates, we settled in for a picnic while buskers entertained us from under a nearby tree and the sun set behind the little semi-circle of food trucks that kept everyone happy and well fed.

I’m recovering from a stomach bug so wasn’t eating, but for everyone else, there was delicious fare from Gumbo Kitchen (of course), Beatbox Kitchen and the Brulee Cart for desert. Mr B opted instead for a piece of giant, doughnut-shaped cinnamon cake that was dressed in purple, green and gold icing. Is this a Mardi Gras thing? Does anyone know?

↑↑ You’ve never seen a child happier with three strings of coloured beads than my little Madeleine, but she was generous enough to share them with her baby brother (despite his mild consternation and ultimately-futile protests).

↑↑ When Way Past Bedtime started to take its toll on both children, we bundled them into the pram. Jazz bands were preparing to take to the main stage, a few people were already up and dancing again in the grass. It looked like loads of fun.

That night, walking through Carlton North under old trees and past even older buildings, the ferocity all gone out of the sun and cats starting to roam the alleyways… walking with my family as Mr B hummed and Harry sucked his fingers and Madeleine waved her beads in the air… that was one of those sublime “grateful” moments that took me back here all over again. Perfect.

ps. About the photos… Apologies that the quality isn’t great. My camera is in being repaired so I borrowed my father’s old camera, BUT I managed to bring the good lens and forget to bring the actual camera, AND earlier the same day my iPhone died… so I was snapping away on Mr B’s old phone.

ps2. Want to see us at Fat Tuesday, last year?

Who knew Santa was a teenaged girl? Or that she lived in Carlton North, Melbourne? Now you do.

ps. Dancing Santa

Two hours later we were awake again, changing and feeding a hungry baby. Then again another two hours after that. When Harry woke and fed a third time only another two hours later, it was time to admit defeat. We carried both wide-awake-though-we-wished-they-weren’t babies downstairs, woke our big baby Emily, and by half past six in the morning, everyone was sitting on the carpet in the lounge room in their pyjamas, surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper and witnessing the steady depletion of the satisfyingly fat Santa sacks that Father Christmas had filled overnight.

Weary, weary bones aside, yesterday was filled with joy.

Joy in waking up with Madeleine, Harry and Emily all in our house together, the first time we’d had the children with us on Christmas morning EVER. Joy in children’s faces when they opened their presents (Madeleine saying “Wowwww” at everything, just because it was fun to say). Mr B’s favourite Elvis Christmas album playing in the background. Friends and Meg joining us for breakfast: croissants, muesli, summer fruits, shimmering glasses of prosecco.

Sweet, plump Harry, not featured in any of these photographs because he slept through the entire breakfast, upstairs, catching up after a busy night of baby gluttony.

Later, Emily dressed up in an inflatable Santa costume and walked up to a local cafe to buy coffees for us all, in the process bringing joy and laughter to every passer-by. (This adventure will warrant a post of its own so stay tuned). And in the afternoon, more friends and extended family came by for wine and cheese and fruit and leftovers, and the house was awash with excited, overtired children, toys and pieces of toys, pets, paper, tinsel and laughter.

By the time everyone went home and our babies were in bed, Mr B and I were about ready to collapse. So we did, on the couch, watching Notting Hill on DVD. As we climbed into bed that night there were no church bells, but we whispered “Thank you” to each other, because it had been such a good day.

Two hours later, we were awake again to change and feed a hungry baby…

But we are staying home. Or at least we are keeping very local. Neither the double pram nor the newborn Ergo insert I ordered online quite some time back have arrived, so getting out and about with a toddler and a newborn baby is pretty tricky. Add to that the Christmas rush: last thing I want is to be caught in the city with a million other people and a crying toddler at her nap time, with a hungry baby and leaking breasts and a line-up for a chair in the Myer nursing room!

Instead, our days are taken up with quiet cuddles, making Anzac biscuits (we are not slaves to the season), playing with water in the courtyard. I cut out paper snowflakes to decorate the house, and Madeleine chose silver and red sleigh-bells to hang from each one. We wrapped Christmas presents while watching Harry Potter movies for an entire afternoon.

But while we have been bunkering down, friends have come to us, with visitors and house-guests almost every day. So we’ve served up simple meals of antipasto or sandwich fillings eaten outside in the sun, delicious beef stroganoff courtesy of the one and only Deb, and one night I made another giant batch of Mr B’s favourite (and incredibly easy to cook) pork ragu.

Harry has been pudging up beautifully, like a little champion. Madeleine is paying him lots of loving attention; holding his hand, smiling when he smiles (ok I tell her it’s a smile), and solicitously placing wet-wipes over his legs like blankets if I don’t stop her. She is adjusting to this big sister gig incredibly well, being (mostly) very patient with all the time I need to give him, and releasing all that pent-up energy that used to go in trips to the park by racing up and down the house pushing her own baby in its own pram, playing with her big sister, and dancing in her nappy like a whirling dervish when her cousins come to visit.

I read this book in the middle of the night for a week while nursing Harry, and it left me feeling a little strange and unsettled. Empty, expectant, like its post-Soviet Ukraine setting. Have you read it? I’d love to know how others felt about it. Now I have turned my nocturnal attention to this book. I’m only just starting it and so far it’s kind of lovely, but I have a prickling foreboding that things might get sad. I’m nervous.

What are you reading? What are you doing? Are you getting out or bunkering down?

There is a seasonal energy in the air. Summer! Christmas! Holidays! I keep getting all excited about the season and then I remember that before Christmas rolls around, I have something a lot bigger to get excited about: Baby B, ready to greet us in a matter of days. And that thought makes Christmas preparations seem incongruous. Instead of putting up decorations I should be folding teeny-tiny little jumpsuits.

Then I look at Madeleine and think “I can’t wait to spend Christmas with my two babies,” and the excitement builds all over again.

If I get my act together in time, I’ll make some more of them this year and send them out. But I also thought I’d share them with you, in case you’d like to do the same for a very easy (three-step) DIY Christmas gift. Here’s how:

Christmas tea-bag printables

You will need: a supply of tea-bags, white card stock, scissors or a craft knife, a stapler, and this template of the four Christmas tea-friends

Instructions:

1. Print the template onto a sheet of white card, in colour. If your printer won’t accept thick card, print onto normal white paper then take it to a newsagency or Office Works-type place that will colour photocopy onto the card

2. Cut around the edge of each figure using a pair of scissors or a craft knife

3. Staple the cardboard tag on a tea-bag to the bottom of each figure

You’re done! Package up your little Christmas tea-bag figures for friends, or pop one of them into a tea cup and enjoy some Christmassy Darjeeling right now!

To call this show “dreamlike” in one sense conjures up just the right atmosphere of magic and unreality, a kind of Wonderland-esque nothing-is-what-it-seems counter-reality that throws you pleasurably off-balance.

But The Trip was a lot more earthy than any dream I can remember. One moment you’re gasping at fluid and seemingly effortless contortionist feats and aerial acrobatic wonders. The next, a sweet little drag queen called Baby Jane has stripped down to a faux-naked bodysuit and is sending bubble farts out through a hole in her suit-bottom.

Imagine vaudeville, imagine cabaret, imagine tongue-in-cheek boylesque, and imagine circus feats of strength, contortions, juggling and trapeze.

Now imagine all of that in a tent that is so small you can see every muscle-tremble, every gleam of sweat, every cheeky wink in a performer’s eye. When world-acclaimed theatrical gymnasts The Caesar Twins perform a stunning routine from inside a fishbowl, you are close enough to get splashed at the end.

Imagine you are seated in a carved wooden booth that is smooth from almost 100 years of patrons just like you. You relax beneath delicate, stained-glass windows in art deco patterns that gleam in the circus-lights like oversized jewels, and sip champagne. This is the same venue in which Marlene Dietrich entertained fans in the 1930s.

I was given very special permission to photograph the show, something that is normally forbidden, so what you’re seeing here is normally kept only for those inside the tent.

I wasn’t allowed to use a flash, and arrived at the last minute (thanks, Madeleine) so I didn’t have a great vantage point for the camera. Still, looking over these photos now I kind of love them. I love the blur of movement in the acrobats, the strange quality given to them by the circus lights, the glimpses of canvas and stained glass and other members of the audience, all of which help recreate the dreamlike world of The Trip. Yes, I’m back to “dreamlike” again. I guess it really is the best way to describe this show.

Honestly though, I highly recommend you go see it for yourself.

The Trip runs until 3 March and the full Spiegeltent program in Melbourne runs until 21 April. Download the program here (isn’t it pretty?) or keep track via Spiegeltent’s Melbourne season on Facebook.

ps. I was not paid to write this post, however, I did receive two tickets to the show courtesy of the generous folks at Arts Centre Melbourne. Thank you!

ps2. We will resume our regular programming of The Storytellers next week