Mothers' Day

There has been a fair amount of activity on blip and elsewhere about Mothers' day. Growing up, my family didn't really go in for this sort of thing. At most, Mum would get some flowers and would be astonished. This was basically because we based our philosophy on making sure that she knew that she was appreciated on a day to day basis - we didn't need a special day to show it.

Fast forward x number of years and it's Gina's first Mothers' day, and I'm the loving father to Miles. I completely agree that it's important that Gina knows that she's appreciated, and the TV has been screaming that if you don't "show Mum that you love her" in an appropriately extravagant manner then she may not make it through to the next year due to feelings of inadequacy and then Miles would be forced to grow up knowing, somehow, that he just didn't deliver well enough on Mum's first mother's day.

With this in mind, I asked Miles what he wanted to do for Gina this year. He answered with a gurgle and spewed a little. I figured that Gina could get spewed on appreciatively any day of the year, and realised that it was going to be up to me. I'm not very good a organising things, as I have the overwhelming worry about disappointing the person that I'm hoping to make happy. Today was no exception (particularly as Gina's mum had already given her the gift that I had intended for her!). I decided that we were going to go and have brunch in a new cafe, and then we'd head over to Melbourne aquarium. "Fish? On Mother's day?" I hear you cry! Well, the thinking was that Gina absolutely loves aquariums, and we've whiled away many an afternoon looking into distorting tanks and laughing at the more ridiculous-looking specimens. Plus, we'd never been to Melbourne aquarium, Mums were getting in for free, and I figured that Miles would either be asleep or engaged in his favourite passtime of looking up at ceiling lights (aquarium lighting is always awesome!).

Things started out well, with Gina loving the card and ring that Miles had thoughtfully remembered (from inside the womb) that she'd seen at the Rose Street Market months ago. Brunch was also pretty amazing, with my first ever breadcrumbed poached egg! I have no idea how this was acheived, but it was pretty amazing and on any other day would have taken prime spot for my blip.

Then the trouble started... we got back in the car and managed to find ourselves sat in non-moving traffic as the Mother's day run for breast cancer caused a main throughfare to grind to a halt. Miles decided at that moment that he was fed up of being in the car and started wailing at the top of his lungs... for the next 45 minutes. We finally broke through the traffic and eventually found a parking space (which included a rapid detour through the casino car park, which wanted to charge us $25 an hour!!! $25!!! Per hour! Surely NOONE would pay that!!?). Insert my normal rant about driving in town and parking and how bikes are infinitely superior urban modes of transport here.

After another queue for tickets, we eventually made it in, feeling frazzled and slightly highly strung. At this point Gina decided to remind me that Mothers' day was supposed to be relaxing... and this wasn't relaxing. Eventually the aquarium magic took over though and we relaxed into it again. Now we may not have seen it in the best light, but Melbourne aquarium was pretty disappointing! Most of it seemed to be closed for renovations. I must admit that the new sea horse section was awesome! Those things are so cool! We also saw some sharks and rays getting fed in a big tank by a diver, which was pretty mental to watch - you wouldn't want to do that if you suffer from claustrophobia! They were all over and around him.

Anyway this is really turning into a long blip now (are you still reading?). The rest of the day wasn't quite as relaxing for Gina as Miles had planned, but, as I said at the start, in my family, we aim to show our appreciation for our Mums on a daily basis. So here's to tomorrow.

Happy Mothers' day to all the Mums out there! What an amazing job you all do.

Note Miles has got his "who me!? what did I do?" face on in this shot :-)