8 day week

this entry has nothing to do with percy. mostly.
i've been thinking a bit lately about why we have a seven day week. given the 365 and a bit days it takes earth to get around sun, 52 weeks of seven days each fits nicely. we just have to add this little extra day (today, by happy coincidence) every four years to make a smooth fit.

having an eight day week in a 365 day year results in 45.625 weeks in one year. kind of an awkward fit. however i think there is still merit in an eight day week. some other maths guru will have to work out how to make it fit.

the reasons for me finding an eight day week a good idea are varied and a bit muddled but i'll try to explain myself. first up i think it would help with employment. i'm not suggesting we work six days instead of five (god no!) i think we should all work four day weeks, divided into two lots. for example half the working population works 'A' half-week for four days and have 'B' half-week of four days off, while the other half of the working population works 'B' half-week and has 'A' half-week off. (maybe i really mean we should have four day weeks?) i'm just using A and B as labels, nothing more.
much of the traditional 9am-5pm, 5 working days has gone by the wayside in our modern society. all of the service industries work seven days at present (think health, food, entertainment, holidays, travel, cleaning, emergency services, call centres, child care) and certainly outside 9-5 hours. even more traditional industries such as finance and legal are expecting workers to be working outside these hours and on weekends, while in the other corner 'family friendly' strategies call for earlier or later starts and finishes to 'normal' working days. if we were all divvied up as A week or B week workers there'd be no 'weekends'. just A or B days- four days your working or four days your not.
i realise there are heaps of issues here surrounding our current labour practices- penalty rates, overtime, loadings, long weekends, etc, etc. i'm not going to address them. i'm just airing some thoughts. i also realise we could divide the day into three eight hour periods, meaning we could all work eight hour shifts thru the 24 hours of the day. see the list above of industries/people that already work outside traditional hours. or look at mining and the like- they often have arrangements of working ten days, then five off, or something similar.
the benefit of four day working periods may be in increasing the participation rate, the actual numbers of people employed and a consequential drop in the unemployment rate.
of course i know people/ projects that have a spaz waiting two days over the weekend for work to recommence- could they possibly wait four days for a person to be back in the office? maybe all jobs would become jobshare; two people working the alternating four days...

anyways, this is probably too boring to continue. plus there's no way i can go into it in detail. just having a think on a slow friday afternoon.

those moments..

there are those moments in life, perhaps they happen every day, that define what being a parent means to you. those things that might pass unremarked, nearly unnoticed, that nevertheless stay in your mind; for recall, reassessment... reaction.
there sits a constant ache in the centre of my chest that reminds me loving percy is a visceral thing. it's not a pain or an illness, it's just a constant throb that means i'm never unaware of her or not thinking of her. she tugs at me physically even when the kilometres stretch between us.
i often think of the three weeks i spent in den bosch lieing at nite with our heads nestled together. the ultimate sweetness of her; her rounded cheeks with her long lashes resting closed, temporarily veiling her deep, wine-dark eyes. those nites were precious and sacred. much like her first few weeks when she slept between paul and i every nite. the difference with the den bosch time being that i selfishly didn't have to share her.
i had percy to myself again on tuesday nite as paul was in shellharbour, keeping what we thought might have been a death bed vigil beside his sick grandfather. i didn't give in to having her sleep with me again tho. now that she is so mobile being in bed with mamma or pappa is considered an opportunity to play, wrestle, bounce, pop out some eyeballs (thankfully unsuccessfully so far!), giggle and wriggle- anything but sleep.

(paul's grandfather has no confirmed diagnosis at present. he's just tremendously sick, including being bed-ridden. despite the revulsion our society generally places on discussing palliative care, euthansia and the death of a loved, older relative, it really would be for the best if he didn't pull thru. he currently resides in the dementia unit of a high-care nursing home where his quality of life is crap. he doesn't know who he is himself, let alone any of his family or carers. his list of other illnesses and medications is long, what does he have to live for?
is this one of those moments when you can confront and assess what it means to you to be a child, and a grandchild too?)

those moments when percy greets you with a smile as wide as her face, both arms stretched out inviting you to gather her up and hold her close. i think the unabashed joy of those moments will never fade, even when she's more likely to be able to pick me up than vice versa!
those moments when you finally get a good sized meal into her. those moments when she speaks a new word. those moments when she manically shakes the see-saw to make it ride up and down again. those moments when she tears down the hall futilely chasing the cats. those moments when she smacks her lips together, a drop of milk whitening them and sighs more contentedly than any cleopatra did upon sighting her conquering roman general. those moments of resting her soft head against your shoulder, nuzzling under your ear. those moments when her fingers curl around yours...
all these keep that throb alive.

on a lighter note- those moments when she sleeps from 7pm to 7am without a stir are the best of all. who am i kidding! she hasn't slept like that ever- i often doubt she ever will! aahhh well...

pop quiz

the answers to yesterday's dinner menu question are:
1. cauliflower,
2. spaghetti bolognaise,
3. custard, and
4. raspberries.

the raspberries mostly ended up on her legs, the custard on her bib, the pasta under her butt and the cauliflower on the floor!
well, she did eat a reasonable amount. it's just funny how much of a mess a baby can create on themselves and the world around them.

i also rang tresillian yesterday to ask about her nite feeds. at 11 months (next week) she really shouldn't be needing/having any feeds thru the nite. after speaking with paul we've decided we'll try to drop the early morning (generally around 2 or 3am) feed first. this will mean offering her water in a cup that she has to sit up to drink instead of a bottle she can slurp on while still lieing down. and then living out the consequences. consequences i predict to be hours of screaming and crying until she's tuckered herself out and falls asleep from exhaustion. uurrgghhh, i hate the thought of it.
we've given ourselves a reprieve on doing this until we are both healthy again. paul's stomach pains are still not entirely gone plus he is nursing a sore throat and a bit of a head cold, while i'm still coughing and got a head full of snot. with the rate that we are getting sick these days tho, we might never get around to weaning percy off the nite feeds! it seems we lurch from one ailment to the next.

on a positive note, perhaps little miss overheard us talking and thought she'd excelerate things herself last nite. she had a bottle just before eleven, then slept 'til 5:45am. six and half hours of sleep! what a delight! i gave her a little breastfeed at 5:45 after which she fell asleep 'til 7am again. when i went it to get her up she was happily sitting up playing with raffles. she gave me a big smile and happy little yelpy sounds. perhaps she enjoys longer sleeps too. not holding my breath for tonite tho- she's too random.

on an especially cute note; playing with raffles involves clutching him desparately with both hands and vigourously rubbing her face with him. then pausing for a breath, panting, grinning and repeat. it's laugh out loud ridiculously adorable. i will have to try to get some footage of her doing this. i think it will call for david attenborough type stalking...

what's for dinner?

can you guess what was on percy's dinner menu tonite...?

helping with the housework

percy was helping me peg out the clothes and mulch the pot plants this week- yeah right!!

mobility

once babies get going there really is no stopping them. percy able demonstrates this by continually trying new stuff and getting into things we really should have done something about long ago. i swear we are going to buy another gate to block off the bottom of the stairs this weekend. on tuesday percy was up to the third step before i caught her, on wednesday i let her climb the lot with me right on her tail. stairs present absolutely no problem- she doesn't even climb up on her knees, just sticks her leg out to stand on each step in a squat before pushing herself up. she was to the top in under a minute and looked so pleased with herself. she sat down and smiled up at me with a huge grin as if to say "see what i just did!" i'm not prepared to let her try going down yet. she'll try going head first instead of backwards or bumping down on her bum, i just know it. she still tries to crawl head first off the bed when we are having our wrestle and tickle sessions.

she no longer cries when dropped at day care too. i think she likes the new stuff. she has brought home another cold. naturally, i'm suffering with it while she's fine again in a day or two. interestingly, i think her having a bit of a runny nose has made her discover new things about her body- for instance that her fingers fit up her nostrils. it's cute, but it's covered in snot so it's not cute. cute/not cute, cute/not cute... too hard to decide.

blowing bubbles

look what percy has learnt to do... she's been at it for three or so days now, today we caught it on camera. no fear for her about putting her face in the water.

careful what you wish for...

last thursday nite poor little miss had a sore tummy resulting in a very unsettled nite. at 10pm we brought her into our bed as that often comforts her, making her happier and more settled. she and i spent the nite cuddled up together (when she wasn't awake and crying) while paul was on the lounge. lucky it's a super comfy lounge!

still, i was recently thinking how much i miss not having percy in bed with us. her gorgeous soft head resting near my shoulder, her little snuggles and wiggles, when she wakes in the morning, smiling at me as the first thing she sees. of course, me smiling back as she is the first thing i see.

however it is hard on paul and i. we end up on the extremities of the bed- or out of it.
careful what you wish for, you might get it!

food improvement

yippee! we seem to be on good thing with feeding punky either the same stuff as us or lumpy and finger food. she has enjoyed her papa's bolognaise, a creamy pasta sauce, fried mushrooms, squares of cheese and torn ham on turkish, diced apricot and mini rice crackers. personally i don't know how she can eat rice crackers i find them awful. never mind! if she wants them i'll buy them by the truck load.

perhaps percy enjoyed preparing her meals. assisting at least... she rode around on paul's back in the back pack supervising.

percy had a big day today. she played with her cousins for a few hours in the middle of the day, then met a bunch of new people at a seventh birthday party. 'course she got a grand total of one hour and 10 mins sleep thru the day which resulted in a melt down at 4pm. a nice long walk in the stroller around sydney park saw her right. she didn't sleep but she was calm and lieing still. she's gone down to sleep this evening quickly. we're still doing two nite feeds tho. oh well.

things only children say...

paul was in the changing room after percy's swimming class this morning and over heard the following...

dad: darling, daddy needs to do a wee now...
daughter: okay
daughter: daddy, why do you have a huge widdle?
dad: i don't know dear, that's just the way it is.
daughter: and there's a huge hole in the end of it.
dad: (muffled chuckle)
daughter: i could fit my whole finger in there!

paul didn't tell me happened after that!

prime minister kevin rudd's apology speech

i know this is very long but i think i want to preserve it for percy. perhaps it will become more important... perhaps she'll want to know more one day...

when she's asked "where were you that day?" she'll have to answer "asleep in my cot", tho she can say "i've got the words to the pm's speech here somewhere, on a disk maybe, in the back of the cupboard..."

I move:
That today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.
There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time.
That is why the Parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nations soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.
Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in Parliament say sorry to the stolen generations.
Today I honour that commitment.
I said we would do so early in the life of the new Parliament.Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd parliament of the Commonwealth.
Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians - those who are indigenous and those who are not - to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.
Some have asked, Why apologise?
Let me begin to answer by telling the Parliament just a little of one person's story - an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s, full of life, full of funny stories, despite what has happened in her life's journey, a woman who has travelled a long way to be with us today, a member of the stolen generation who shared some of her story with me whenI called around to see her just a few days ago.
Nanna Nungala Fejo, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s.
She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek.
She remembers the love and the warmth and the kinship of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the camp fire at night.
She loved the dancing. She remembers once getting into strife when, as a four-year-old girl, she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders rather than just sitting and watching the men, as the girls were supposed to do.
But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men.
Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide.
What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip.
The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck.

Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice, all in the name of protection.
A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them?
The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England.
That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that.
She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission.
Nanna Fejo's family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again.
After she left the mission, her brother let her know that her mum had died years before, a broken woman fretting for the children that had literally been ripped away from her.
I asked Nanna Fejo what she would have me say today about her story. She thought for a few moments then said that what I should say today was that ''all mothers are important''.
And she added: ''Families - keeping them together is very important. It's a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That's what gives you happiness.''
As I left, later on, Nanna Fejo took one of my staff aside, wanting to make sure that I was not too hard on the Aboriginal stockman who had hunted those kids down all those years ago.
The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, sorry. And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.
Nanna Fejo's is just one story. There are thousands, tens of thousands of them: stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century.
Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing Them Home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard.

There is something terribly primal about these firsthand accounts. The pain is searing; it screams from the pages. The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.
These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology.
Instead, from the nation's Parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade; a view that somehow we, the Parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side, to leave it languishing with thehistorians, the academics and the cultural warriors, as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.
But the stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.
The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward.Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today.
But should there still be doubts as to why we must now act, let the Parliament reflect for a moment on the following facts: that, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30% of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers; that, as a result, up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families; that this was the productof the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute; that this policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage were seen as part of a broader policy of dealing with the problem of the Aboriginal population.
One of the most notorious examples of this approach was from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who stated: ''Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes'' - to quote the protector - ''will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white''.

The Western Australian Protector of Natives expressed not dissimilar views, expounding them at length in Canberra in 1937 at the first national conference on indigenous affairs that brought together the Commonwealth and state protectors of natives.
These are uncomfortable things to be brought out into the light. They are not pleasant. They are profoundly disturbing.
But we must acknowledge these facts if we are to deal once and for all with the argument that the policy of generic forced separation was somehow well motivated, justified by its historical context and, as a result, unworthy of any apology today.
Then we come to the argument of intergenerational responsibility, also used by some to argue against giving an apology today.
But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.
The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity. There are still serving members of this Parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.
It is well within the adult memory span of many of us.
The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.
There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation - and that value is a fair go for all.
There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all.
There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.
It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology - because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible.
We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves.
As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well.
Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia's history.

In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate.
In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul.
This is not, as some would argue, a black-armband view of history; it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth - facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it.
Until we fully confront that truth, there will always be a shadow hanging over us and our future as a fully united and fully reconciled people.
It is time to reconcile. It is time to recognise the injustices of the past. It is time to say sorry. It is time to move forward together.
To the stolen generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.
I offer you this apology without qualification.
We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted.
We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.
We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.
In making this apology, I would also like to speak personally to the members of the stolen generations and their families: to those here today, so many of you; to those listening across the nation - from Yuendumu, in the central west of the Northern Territory, to Yabara, in North Queensland, and to Pitjantjatjara in South Australia.
I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the Government and the Parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.
Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.
Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing.I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you.
I say to honourable members here present: imagine if this had happened to us. Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.
My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is accepted in the spirit of reconciliation, in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.

And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us.Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot.
For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.
It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history.Today's apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs.It is also aimed at building a bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt.
Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.
But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.
This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation,to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy.
The truth is: a business as usual approach towards indigenous Australians is not working.
Most old approaches are not working.
We need a new beginning, a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible,tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation.
However, unless we as a Parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.

Let us resolve today to begin with the little children, a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations.
Let us resolve over the next five years to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper pre-literacy and pre-numeracy programs.
Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial pre-school year.
Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote indigenous communities up to four times higher than in othercommunities.
None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.
The mood of the nation is for reconciliation now, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The mood of the nation on indigenous policy and politics is now very simple.
The nation is calling on us, the politicians, to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics and to elevate this one core area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide.
Surely this is the unfulfilled spirit of the 1967 referendum. Surely, at least from this day forward, we should give it a go.
Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new Parliament.
I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past.
I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement, to begin with, an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years.

It will be consistent with the Government's policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition.
This would probably be desirable in any event because, unless such a proposition were absolutely bipartisan, it would fail at a referendum. As I have said before, the time has come for new approaches to enduring problems.
Working constructively together on such defined projects would, I believe, meet with the support of the nation. It is time for fresh ideas to fashion the nation's future.
Mr Speaker, today the Parliament has come together to right a great wrong. We have come together to deal with the past so that we might fully embrace the future. We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched.
So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection.
Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepestlevel of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.
It is for the nation to bring the first two centuries of our settled history to a close, as we begin a new chapter. We embrace with pride, admiration and awe these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us cultures that provide a unique, uninterrupted human thread linking our Australian continent to the most ancient prehistory of our planet.
Growing from this new respect, we see our indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that indigenous Australia faces in the future.
Let us turn this page together: indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation's story together.
First Australians, First Fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance just a few weeks ago. Let's grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land: Australia. I commend the motion to the House

reverse the reverse?

due to percy limiting her food intake i came to the conclusion that she just wasn't ready for lumpier food yet. which is odd because the literature says she should be enjoying quite lumpy food and feeding herself finger food- you know, little sandwiches, lumps of cheese, bits of fruit, etc.
i was working on the idea that she still prefers puree stuff. i' ve reversed her progression to 'bigger' food, giving her instead food that generally is for 6 month olds. however that hasn't been going so well either.

last nite she gleefully downed mouthful after mouthful of her papa's herb risotto. this risotto is not a creamy soft one; it's quite hard and chewy. gums are apparently as good for chewing as teeth. luckily, since she only has two tiny ones. she seemed really happy to have this rice to munch on- opening her mouth wide for each spoonful and chomping away with a smile. then she progressed to eating near on a full punnet of blueberries by picking up halfs and popping them in her mouth on her own. 'popping' is a little misleading- more like mashing, missing and trying again!

so perhaps i've got it all backwards. she doesn't want purees, she's keen on chewy things and things she can do herself. kinda a shame 'bout those dozen jars of puree in the cupboard! oh well, i'll mix them with something else.

let's see what happens over the coming days before we celebrate too much.

much of a muchness

we've been ambling along here. nothing particularly new or exciting is going on. percy still wakes every nite, tho to be fair to her she only needed one feed last nite, at midnite. the previous two nites she was up three times. it's hard to be positive about the future when you can't predict whether you are going to be conscious enough to enjoy it because you've had such broken sleep the nite before.

she's still a hit and miss eater. mostly miss. it's depressing to keep trying to find something she'll swallow. not a task that can be assigned to the 'too-hard' basket tho so i'll persist.

one new development is the delightful bath tub squirm. the video probably doesn't show it well but she has taken to wiggling her hips back and forth in her bath. perhaps the warm water and the soap is fun. (i also don't know how to turn it 90 degrees)

happy at day care

all reports are that percy is settling in well at her child care. she doesn't cry when paul drops her off in the mornings. she still isn't chuffed and protests with a scrunched up face but is easily distracted. when i pick her up she cries for a second but then bounces gleefully in my arms. i think the cry is the product of a huge swell of emotion that she doesn't know how else to release.
she is sleeping around an hour morning and afternoon, which is also what she does at home. the staff aren't having any luck giving her bottles of milk but then neither are we at home. she takes her milk thru the nite drat it! yes, we seem to be on the two wakes a nite gig again. oh well.

on wednesday percy and i met sarah and rose for lunch at bitton. it was the perfect day to go as the rain held off and we were able to spend an hour in the park too. forgot the camera so you'll have to take my word for it that both little girls really enjoyed the long grass and crawling around exploring each others strollers and possessions. so much so that i tried to swap the rusk that rose found in percy's stroller, for rose's stroller as percy was pushing it off across the park anyways. sarah didn't seem to think this was a fair swap. hmmm....
percy really did enjoy walking with the big wheeled stroller thru the grass- it made much better headway than her little-wheeled one.

sleeping again

percy did two nites running of only waking once, as i think i've already reported. unfortunately she followed this up with two nites of waking three times. rats!
last nite she went back to one waking.
we're not sure but it's possible the cooler nites were the nites she slept better. let's see what happens tonite. it is cooler.

during one of her naps last week. she scooched up to the top of her cot during her land of nod visit...

the problem of demand and supply

last friday percy left me in a rather inenviable position. by the time i picked her up from child care i was a whole lot gladder to see her than she was to see me. this is why...

breasts are remarkable things- for practical purposes, thank you very much all you leering men! they make milk for babies to suck out day after day after day. when a baby sucks all the milk out the breast just goes ahead and makes more. jan informed me months ago that a breast can refill in twenty minutes!
until she started eating solid food percy was a great sucker. she latched on within hours of being born and never looked back. unlike the awful stories i had heard about bad attachment, cracked and bleeding nipples, mastitis etc, i was fortunate that i breezed thru breastfeeding, apart from one bout of blocked ducts during my stay in den bosch with rob and phil. even that cleared up in under a day.

since eating solid foods percy has become far less predictable with how much and when she wants milk. we also reintroduced a bottle (initially mostly containing formula and now only ever formula because i hate expressing and i've packed the expressing machine and the sterilser away) for her at around eight months in anticipation of me going back to work and her not having a handy milk boob around. she is offered milk upon waking in the morning, after each of her naps and as a last thing at nite before going to bed. the day time milk feeds when at home could be either bottle or breast. the 'good morning' and 'good nite' feeds are always breast.

last friday morning percy drained my left breast but took only two or three 'sucks' from my right before she decided that was enough. no encouragement would get her to take more. "hmmmm..." i thought "this might get interesting..." and it did. you see, unfortunately those couple of little sucks stimulated the breast to make more milk but the previous lot hadn't been sucked out. so i essentially ended up with two lots of milk where only one fits! this isn't a big deal when i'm with percy because at the next feed i just make sure she starts with the double lot breast and it's all hunky dory. when i'm at work tho the next feed is twelve hours away. over the course of the day my breast got tighter and tighter and more and more engorged. i've experienced this plenty before, particularly in the early weeks when percy and my boobs were still deciding on their working relationship. but there was no relief in sight last friday! it nearly got to the point of me rushing out into the street and acosting any baby i saw to help me out. as it was i ended up in a cubicle in the toilets at work at 2pm, with my top off, hand expressing into a wad of toilet paper. yippee- what a dignified and delightful life i lead.
i've hand expressed once before- it sucks; no pun intended.

for those of you who don't get the significance of this let me elucidate...
engorged breasts are super sensitive and super painful, even brushing your own arm gently over your breast while undertaking the lightest of tasks hurts. engorged breasts can lead to blocked ducts, mastitis, infection, hospitalisation and complete bed rest for days if not weeks.

i was feeling nauseous and headachey by the time i got to percy around 4:30pm. she was happy to undo my predicament. ahhhhh....

i really hope she continues with full feeds every morning because i don't want to go thru that sort of a day again. the necessity of having a breast pump, sterliser and all other accoutrements at work is just too depressing to contemplate.

hence the problem of demand and supply.

new babies

this afternoon percy and i went to meet new baby oliver. he was born on wednesday. i got to have a cuddle and i must say it was kinda weird to hold a tiny, little bub again. percy is so big and robust in comparison, we're used to slinging her around and holding her one-handed, oliver in comparison is so cutely tiny i was nervous! i did take one photo of him unfortunately it was just when he decided he was hungry and cried for his mum...

new bubs are on the way for emma, ruth, orion, joan... must be the age of us!