William discovered a few new things in Melbourne that we don’t have at home in Oxford. There were sliding doors at a few different people's houses that we visited, and he was very keen on opening and closing them…continually. I think that if he could speak, he’d make it clear that we must get one at home. They were a bit hit.
Another success was playing with hoses with a trigger controller on the end. Mum introduced William to one at the beach, and he was hugely entertained by the fact that water shot out the end when he squeezed the trigger. I have a little movie of him laughing as the force of the water pressure pushes him backwards into the shed door, which ends with him turning towards me and squirting my camera. He also found that pretty entertaining. He just chuckled and chuckled every time he made water squirt out of the hose. Maybe once Andrew gets his water butt installed, we’ll get a hose so that William can water the garden for us.
Slightly more surprising was his interest in fly wire. The UK doesn’t have the mosquito and fly problem that Australia has (which is one of the reasons I love living here!) So William hadn’t come across the fine mesh that most Australian hoses have to stop insects getting inside while the windows are open. William especially liked leaning with his full body weight against the fly wire at our friends Mel and Stu’s house – it was very unnerving to watch, seeing as the fly wire was the only thing stopping him from falling out the window.
But William’s best discovering in Melbourne was Toby, my mum and dad’s dog. Before we arrived, they had been a little worried about what Toby would make of William, as Toby doesn’t know many little children. There had been talk of shutting Toby away if he didn’t get on well with William. But they got on fantastically and became a team. William would throw Toby’s ball, and loved it when Toby fetched it back for him. William kept all his toys (generously leant to us by friends) in the same box as Toby’s toys, and regularly tipped the whole lot out onto the floor. Toby cleaned up all the food that William dropped on the floor. William learnt how to take Toby’s bowl over to the bag of Toby’s food, and put some dried pellets in the bowl for Toby to eat. But the most exciting thing about Toby for William, was taking him for walks. Such a shouting and fetching of the leash there was, when we asked William to take Toby for a walk. It was quite an event. So, at least once a day, William (and Grannie or Grandpa) took Toby around the block for a walk.
