Dean & Lucy from Australia Read Bedtime Stories (Podcast).

So...we're fortunate in our household that both our children have taken to reading and story telling with the kind of enthusiasm that makes bedtime a welcome part of the day. My wife and I take it in turns (mostly) to read to the children, swapping between our 9 year old son and 6 year old daughter. 

A few nights ago, my daughter Lucy, asked me - quite out of the blue I might add - what a podcast was. Apparently she'd been talking to her school friends and they were discussing story telling podcasts. I've no idea which ones they were talking about but Lucy told me that she wanted to do a story telling podcast of her own and could she and I record one. 

Evidently, the ability to record audio nowadays is pretty easy, so we decided to have a crack. So in the interests of sharing, I'd like to present to you our *ahem* attempt at story telling with a short read through of "The Night Fright" from the popular Australian "Billie B. Brown" children's books by Sally Rippin - one of Lucy's favourite authors.

DOWNLOAD .MP3 as read by Dean and Lucy Mayes. (right click and 'Save As...').

Billie loves hanging out with Rebecca's older sisters. They make her feel so grown-up! But is Billie grown-up enough to handle the scary movies they like? 

Sally Rippin was born in Darwin and grew up in South-East Asia. As an adolescent she studied traditional Chinese painting for three years in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Returning to Australia, her time overseas inspired her first novel Chenxi and the Foreigner. Sally has also written and illustrated many books for children, including titles from the Go Girl and Aussie Bites series and the popular Fang Fang stories. She is also the illustrator for many others, including the recent Me, Oliver Bright (2009) by Megan de Kantzow and Mannie and the Long Brave Day (2009) by Martine Murray. Sally lives in Melbourne and writes and illustrates full time.

Run time is a little under 15 minutes and we had a lot of fun recording this at bedtime. 

DFA.

Life Lessons from the Toilet Exhaust Fan.

Over the weekend, my children experienced the reality of death and dying. There was an awful sound coming from the toilet fan this afternoon. Upon popping the cover, a poor little mouse was hanging, trapped between the blades. My daughter Lucy gasped upon seeing it. But I gasped when I gently tried to extricate it from the fan and it squeaked in desperation, clawing at me to free it. 

It was still alive.

With great care, I was able to get the little critter down and, with Lucy's help we made a little bed for it in a margarine container. The mouse was severely shocked and undoubtedly injured but, as the old saying goes, where there's life, there's hope. Lucy sat with the mouse, cradling the margarine container, weeping softly and asking me if she was going to be alright. I told her I didn't know but if you stay her and let her know you're there, that would be very good. That might help.

After a couple of hours, the dear little mouse, quietly slipped away on her little bed of Kleenex. Lucy said a little prayer and we gently put the lid on the margarine container. We buried it in the garden. 

Life comes and it goes. How each life affects us, makes all the difference.

DFA.

Gemini Downs - There Need Be No Other Title.

On New Years Eve, my young family took a tram up to Adelaide's Elder Park to enjoy a free NYE's outdoor concert in the twilight hours on the river Torrens. It was a typically balmy Adelaide evening after a day which had brought temperatures of up to 100 degrees (F). By the time we set ourselves down on the grass in front of the rotunda however, it was a much more hospitable environment in which to enjoy some live music and we had a totally lovely time there.


One of the things that made the free concert so enjoyable was the quality of the acts that were headlining the event. Bands such as the Atlantic Street Band, Lucky Seven, The Wholias, Matsuri Taiko Japanese Drummers,  Las Chicas Bomba Brazilian Dancers entertained in an atmosphere that was suited to everyone - not just families. You had big band sounds, the sounds of Bourbon Street, Argentine rhythms and some eclectic Bollywood bravura in amongst the set list and it made for a totally enjoyable evening, which was capped off by an early fireworks display at 9PM - perfect for the kids. 


But in amongst all these stellar musical acts was one band that stood out like a beacon and had me wanting for more. And, true to form, I embarked on a typically enthusiastic information gathering exercise the next day on the band Gemini Downs.

On stage during 2011's NYE celebrations, Adelaide, Australia.

Gemini Downs is a seven piece South Australian indie folk rock outfit who hail from the pretty South East township of Mt. Gambier. Formed by siblings Sean and Jessica Braithwaite sometime in 2010, Gemini Downs takes it's name from a holiday spot on South Australia's Coorong district, where the Braithwaites spent many holidays as children. Their beginnings were unassuming enough but the outfit has since grown exponentially and they now feature a superb line up of musicians from both Australia and abroad. Their music is, what I like to call, heart-land music - a richly Australian sound that turns the traditional notions of folk music on it's head and fuses it with a rock sensibility that is gutsy but understated. Again, I hate comparing here but for the purposes of this article - there are flourishes of The Decemberists, Swear & Shake (who I featured here at DFA Dot Com last year), Australian band The Waifs, Missy Higgins and perhaps a little bit of The Mavericks.


Where Gemini Downs mark their individuality though is in the way they flirt - devilishly so - with the unconventional by bringing a host of instruments to their music including the piano accordion, alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet, mandolins, the Cello even tap dancing. Jessica Braithwaite is a formidable tap dancer who, during the NYE performance in the park, ripped the roof off the place with an enthusiastic tap performance that works - TOTALLY WORKS. Their songs are lyrical poetry and speak of love and places, life in all it's untarnished glory, the passionate and the dispassionate. You will listen for their lyrics but you will experience their musicality as a sumptuous whole and take it all in like a hearty meal that leaves you warm.

My Daughter Rocks Out With the band at Adelaide's NYE celebration.

As their profile Down Under continues to rise, Gemini Downs has already featured on Triple J's Unearthed series which gives exposure to up an coming Australian bands and, at the time of writing, they are working on a debut album to complement a self titled EP release which is available as a download from CD Baby for the princely sum of $5.99. I've already purchased this EP and I can attest to the beauty of the Gemini Downs sound (check my left side bar where I've placed their album cover). It is rich. It is honest and it is wonderfully unconventional. 


I hope for big things for this band and given their impressive work rate on the tour circuit domestically, Gemini Downs will be an outfit to watch in 2012. Try out their music. I know you won't be disappointed. 


DFA.

Post Script - My daughter's first experience of fireworks.

Discovering The Tortoise Collar.

I had this whole other post I was going to write this week...in fact - I've had several posts lined up over the past few weeks but I haven't had the heart or the mind to write them. I've lost the drive for writing just at the moment - something which is depressing me a lot. But other things have taken over which are far and away more important - and saddening right now.

We finally got an answer to the mystery that has been our daughter's crooked neck this past week. Those of you who visit my site regularly may recall a couple of posts I wrote last year when we first began observing a distressing head tilt and generalized stiffness in our infant daughter. The symptoms became all the more alarming when Lucy started having long periods of neck stiffness and visible discomfort that would last for several weeks at a time before abating somewhat. She would enjoy a short period of relative freedom before relapsing into these episodes again.

Over the Christmas period, we began to notice that Lucy's sleep patterns were broken by these terrible seizures that would come out of no-where and cause her to jerk and spasm for long periods of time before settling too. They'd occasionally happen during waking hours but they were much more visible at night. Suffice to say, it's been bloody awful to watch.

Well, after seeing a neurologist in Adelaide, who specializes in children, we came away with a rather distressing diagnosis - benign paroxysmal torticollis of infancy. The disorder is so rare that, in the words of our neurologist, he has seen maybe one case in six years.

This syndrome usually becomes apparent from the age of about six months - right at the time that many infants are beginning to hold their head up on their own. It is characterized by the alarming head tilt which, in itself is problematic because it pulls the musculature of the head and neck out of sync, resulting in associated problems that require physiotherapy to correct. We are told that the reason for this head tilt is because Lucy is experiencing severe migraine headaches - severe enough that they cause her considerable pain and exhaust her easily. Along with these headaches are pallor, sweating and generalized stiffness, poor sleep and in some cases seizures. Treatment for the symptoms is limited and sufferers of it don't readily respond to pain relieving medication, partucularly in the case of the migraines.

Now the real kicker with this syndrome - lets call it BPTI since wanky monikers are often given over for the sake of brevity - is that we can expect Lucy to have to deal with it up until the age of 5 years, after which time it should taper off to nothing and Lucy should be okay.

Should be okay...

So in the meantime Lucy has to endure these extended periods of suffering and there isn't a hell of a whole lot we can do to alleviate her pain.

BPTI is one of those syndromes for which not much is known about it. It is part of a family of benign (an oxy-fucking-moron if I ever saw one) neurological disorders in children that have no apparent causative factor and just seem to pick their subjects randomly. Of course, medicos take grwat pains to stress the benign part of the descriptor but when a parent is holding their infant daughter in their arms and she is seizing as though attached to a faulty electrical cable, screaming in pain - there is nothing fucking benign about it.

It's not all bad though. Lucy remains a blissfully happy child with a mischevious streak which is becoming apparent - even on her bad days. She is hitting her milestones as we would expect and, although developmental delays are a concern with BPTI, we are hopeful that Lucy will be okay. If anything, it has served to strengthen our resolve to be as attentive to her developmental needs as we can.

In the meantime, we continue to see a physiotherapist who specializes in children and who has a wealth of experience with the singular phenomenon of torticollis (the neck part). By keeping Lucy's neck muscles supple, we're hoping to prevent any lasting damage to her neck. We also intend to explore some alternative treatment modalities which will complement the treatment she has had thus far. Whilst I'm wary of many of these so called therapies, I don't discount for a moment the value of some of the more universally respected Eastern modalities which have proven effective.

I've shed tears - more than a few these past few weeks and I have struggled to absorb the diagnosis with all it's ramifications for the near-term. I'm angry, grief stricken, powerless to intervene or to protect her from the awful pain Lucy goes through each time things get bad.

And yet...

Encouragement and hope have come from the most unlikely of places.

Whilst conducting a round one evening, last week, on the block at the prison I have been nursing at, I was overcome by emotion and struggled to regain my composure for fear of being laid bare in front of the "guests". As I was tending to a fairly notorious character, giving out his medications and checking his charts, he rather uncharacteristically patted my arm and said quietly, even knowingly "Everything will be okay son". Our eyes met and for the briefest of moments, I saw in his compassion and hope - commodities that in a place like that, are uncharacteristic gems.

So the Tortoise Collar has been discovered. We hold it reluctantly.