Merry Christmas from us!

Merry Christmas to everyone, and we hope you all have a safe and fun 2012!

This year, I’m not beating myself up over failing to get Christmas cards done on time; I am liberating myself from the cards!  Instead of cards, I first decided to try a newletter but the templates on Word were beyond crap. Then I tried a plain old letter template but getting pictures into it was just a huge PITA. So I am doing a blog entry instead since I have wasted too many hours on this and could have done cards five times over by now. At least I know it's pretty quick and easy to use the template on this!

Most of you know that I stopped the blog about half way through this year.  My personality doesn't suit writing into an electronic abyss with no easy way for people to communicate back to me. To be honest, I thought there were only three people reading this blog and it was only in the months afterwards that about a dozen people asked me what happened to it!  But FB is still the easiest way to let people know about the things going on in our life, so that is where the updates shall happen this coming year I think.

On to our Christmas letter then:

As always, this year has gone by quickly - too quickly! Will is growing up and changing on a daily basis. His little personality is emerging more and more, and he is an interesting blend of the two of us. The highlights of the year for us (or, let's be honest, for me as I am the one writing this!) were:

• My husband's parents' visit to Australia. You can read about that here.

• Mr. Baby's 1st Birthday. We had a party (of course!) and Mr. Baby had no idea what was going on, but he thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the people who came and has loved playing with all the gifts he got!  Here are a few pics of the day:

The party had a dinosaur theme and this was the cake I made. And yes - it took a few hours!

There was a second cake, much less fancy, since there were so many people there to feed.

One of Mr. Baby's favourite toys that he received (and still plays with every day) was a little house from all our lovely neighbours.

• Mr Baby learns to walk! And of course, he doesn't sit still for more than 2 seconds at a time now :) He now runs, walks backwards and even kicks a ball (with a lot of concentration). Back in October when he had only just started walking a few weeks before, I took this little bit of video. Looking at it now I see how slow and carefully he walked and how wide his stance is to keep his balance. It's incredible to think that in just two months he has mastered so much! This video was taken a couple of weeks ago as Mr. Baby chased seagulls in a park near my folks' place.

• My husband's 30th b'day. My own 30th feels so long ago now sadly :) But we certainly celebrated my husband's in style. My folks agreed to have Mr. Baby for the Saturday night on the weekend before his b'day and I booked us a night at the Four Seasons Hotel down at The Rocks in Sydney (right by the harbour for those who don't know Sydney). We had a great lunch at an old pub, a bit of time to lay by the pool and then a fantastic dinner at a French restaurant. The next morning was a leisurely brunch followed by some window shopping in town before picking up the little guy at my folks' place. Here he is at lunch at the Glenmore:

• We also had surprise birthday drinks for my husband when we visited the US, which was another big highlight for us this year.  A whole bunch of his friends and family travelled to K'zoo to wish him Happy Birthday and it was a great afternoon. The rest of the trip was equally fantastic - it was so wonderful to see all our friends and family again. Mr. Baby got to impress everyone with his walking, dancing and "talking", he met Nemo the giant schnauzer (his Grandparents' dog), went to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo, he saw snow, played a piano at his great-grandparents' place, and rode in a DC cab!  As you can see from these pics, Mr. Baby absolutely enjoyed this trip!

Nemo, the giant schnauzer, and Mr. Baby

Having a go in a helicopter display at the Air Zoo

All geared up after being out in the snow!

Belting out a few show tunes on his great grandparents' piano

• Last, but certainly not least, a big highlight for the year was my husband getting a well-deserved promotion at work!  His new job, which he started on Dec 1st, has a regional focus (rather than just Aus/NZ like his previous job) so he should have some interesting travel coming up next year.

Coming up next year, I will be doing an Interior Design course starting in late February for about 3 months. Should be a lot of fun and really interesting as I have a real love of interior design. Fingers crossed that I have a knack for it too :) We don't have much travel planned for next year yet - just a trip to Melbourne for Mr. Baby and I in late Jan/early Feb to see my grandmother. But please do come and visit us in Sydney! We would love to see you! 

We hope everyone has a fantastic holiday period with some fun and happy times with all your friends and family.  We are excited to be seeing so many of ours over the Xmas/NY break!  Before I sign off, here are some of my favorite photos over the past 6 months, including some from the professional photographer that we got to do some photos for us. His name is Eric Tsang and I cannot recommend him enough, especially if you have little kids. He was absolutely fabulous with Mr. Baby and although we only had the photo shoot a week ago he has gotten a half dozen of our shots to us already.


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Out for my b'day dinner in August

How cute do babies look in hats?!

The family that barracks together, stays together - Go Swannies!!

Our own Little Wolverine :)

"Yo dude, I'm going out scoping for chicks, wanna come?"

At the beach on one of the few decent weather days we've had this summer!

The combo of the "wrestling" pj's with that belly makes me giggle every time!

Mr. Baby looking pretty darn adorable

Bubbles!!!!

Now we finally have a family photo.

I'm Back

So I didn't blog for a while as our computer was playing up. But we did get a new one... about 3 weeks ago.  I've been a bit lazy I suppose as once a bit of time goes by there are many things that have happened and I was lacking in the energy to figure out what to write and what not to write about. 

The biggest thing that happened this last month was that my husband's parents visited us for two weeks! It was so wonderful to see them. We have both missed them tremendously, even though we skype each weekend it just isn't the same.  They were so great with Mr. Baby and he LOVED them! They were a ready and willing audience to his antics :) They were also so helpful in taking care of him when we were out and my mother-in-law helped at bathtime every single night, which was so nice for me!

We did a lot of touristy things the first week they visited: Taronga Zoo, Sydney Aquarium, Manly Beach, Grand Pacific Drive, Symbio Wildlife Park, Kangaroo Valley, Centennial Winery.  It was a busy first week!  Then on the second week they took our car and headed out for a few days on their own in the Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley.  It worked out well because Mr. Baby was a little worn out from all the excursions!  (So was I, but don't tell anyone...) It was such a great visit and we have all been missing them a lot since they left last Monday.  sigh! Here are some pics of Mr. Baby out and about (I won't post pics of the in-laws as I don't think they'd be cool with them being on the internet!)

At Taronga Park Zoo - would have to be the zoo with the best views in the world!

At Symbio Wildlife Park in the awesomely cool hat his Grandma and Grandpa got him!

Feeding kangaroos at Symbio Wildlife Park

Petting the little pony at Symbio Wildlife Park

The tooooth, the tooooth...*

*This will not seem very funny to you if you haven't seen the movie Dune - yes, the entertainingly crappy one from 30 years ago based on the book.


 Mr. Baby finally has a tooth!  I have been trying to get a photo of it but it's just too darn small to get on camera at this stage.  But it's there!  All those months and months of teething has finally produced a tooth.  'Bout bloody time.. It was a tough week for him (and hence, me) last week as he also had a bad cold (which he shared not just with his parents but also his grandparents).  There was so much mucus and drool I actually gagged at one point.  With all the various poop explosions and being pee'ed on since he was born, I was surprised that it was snot that finally got me to gag in the end.  But, dear lord, there was just so much of it and I was using one of those bulb syringes to get it out and the sound along with the visual was too much for me.  Mr. Baby wasn't too happy either - I can only imagine how uncomfortable it is to have a big rubber tube stuck up your nose and sucking everything out.  Poor thing.  He was pretty uncomfortable for the entire week and the cold is still lingering a bit along with a cough.

The cold has resulted in two weeks of him taking terrible daytime naps. He's never been a good daytime sleeper but the last two weeks have been shocking.  Some days he was barely sleeping 40 mins during the entire day. He started to improve a bit this week. I am now training him to go to sleep without being rocked and cuddled.  I love cuddling him and rocking him to sleep but he's getting much too big now and needs to learn to go to sleep on his own. Trouble is, I have to keep laying him down as he is like a jack-in-the-box who pops up as soon as you lay him down.  This caused some frustrated tears the first day (his, not mine!) but the last couple of days he has decided it is a VERY fun game.  My back is killing me from lifting up 11kgs of baby repeatedly whilst bending from my waist.  A big no, no for lifting!  Anyways, he giggles and laughs the whole time so today after 10 mins of this I gave up, said 'goodnight' and just left him standing there in his cot.  He talked and giggled some more but went to sleep after about 15 mins.  And my back is thanking me! He is still only napping for an hour and a half total for the day but short of knocking him out, I can't think of how to get him to sleep longer. If we have another kid I REALLY hope it sleeps both at night AND during the day. 

I don't have much else to report to be honest.  I know I have been quiet on the wires the two weeks but that has mostly been due to the fact that our computer is dying. Or at least its graphics card is.  So we have a new one on its way to us but it won't get here until my in-laws do in about 10 days.  We are all super excited to see my husband's parents. They are visiting us for 12 days, which is not very long, so we will make the most of it.  I am nervous that they may not like Australia that much.  It's important to me that they do - that they don't question why the heck their son would move all the way to the other side of the world!  I want them to see the country as my husband and I do - as "worth it".  So I hope things go smoothly for them.  They arrive at 6am Monday week and unfortunately my husband has to be in Melbourne that very morning for a work breakfast so I will have to get Mr. Baby up and sorted out and over to the airport to pick them up.  As long as we don't hit bad traffic on the way back it will probably all be ok, but if immigration, etc takes a long time and we it ends up being peak hour  then we might be sitting in the car for quite a while.  I will be bringing plenty of snacks for the little guy just in case.  He is just like his mummy and gets pretty crabby when he's hungry.

Ok, the screen is getting black spots on it so I have to sign off before it crashes yet again. But in a week or so we'll have the new computer and I will hopefully get back into the swing of writing regularly!

Easter Break

So you may have noticed that I did not post anything for the past couple of weeks.  It's because we took a short holiday down to the coast, at Mornington Peninsula in Victoria!  It's about an hour or so south of Melbourne so it was a real trek for us (we drove) but Mr. Baby did really well with all that car time.  We headed down on the Thursday before Easter and stayed in Melbourne. The next day we had an Easter lunch with my Grandma and my aunt before heading down to Mornington on Friday afternoon. 

We stayed at St Andrews Beach right on the coast in a great house, which we shared with our very good friends who live in Melbourne, Matt and Zoe. They have a daughter who is only two weeks younger than Mr. Baby (we will call her Little Miss Baby) and you may recall that we caught up with them when they visited Sydney at the end of October right after we had arrived in Australia. Or you may not...

Anyways, we had a fabulous week and it was so great to catch up with our friends.  The bubba's got on so well and enjoyed playing with each other. Although I must admit that their 'playing' seemed to consist of one baby picking up a toy, the other one coming over and taking it, then either of them picking up another toy and the other one grabbing it, etc etc.  Luckily, neither of them are at the stage of "Mine!" so they didn't care when the other one took the toy out of their hands but it was funny to watch!

Here are some piccies from the trip....

We started our trip down with a breakfast of champions - Burger King! Although Mr. Baby had fruit, we still put the silly crown on him :)

This is St Andrews Beach - just beautiful!!

We took a walk down to the beach most days. Sometimes in the stroller...

Sometimes using this hiking backpack thing our friends had.

Although Mr. Baby clearly enjoyed the backpack, it KILLED my back! We will not be getting one.

We went out for lunch at a cafe in Sorrento nearby. It was all a bit much for the little guy.

We had a drink at the Portsea Pub at sunset (can you believe I took all these pics with just my iphone?!)

A couple of days we just stayed at the house relaxing with the bubs.

We had lunch on our last full day at a lovely winery - T'Gallant. Yep, weird name. Pretty place though!

And we left on the big trek back to Sydney before dawn, which allowed us to see a beautiful sunrise while driving along the Hume Hwy.

Thankfully, Mr. Baby did a lot of napping in the car for these long trips!

Places to go, people to see!

Last weekend Mr. Baby attended his very first birthday party! Actually, technically it was his second one since he was at my birthday party last year when he was 2 weeks old. But this is the first one for a little friend of his. One of the other mums that I meet up with for coffee/lunch most weeks has a daughter named Dayle, who turned one last weekend! So we went along to her birthday party (we were invited of course - we didn't just crash it!) on Sunday afternoon.  Mr. Baby had such a great time!  There were a bunch of other kids there and he really enjoyed being around them. I think the hours of "socialising" at the day care place have really paid off as he is really enjoying being with other kids. Here is Mr. Baby and his daddy walking to Dayle's house.

Mr. Baby travels in style on his Daddy Chariot!

 He looooved the neck ride so I have given him a couple this week. He especially loves it when you bounce up and down - makes him giggle a lot, which I love.  He's no lightweight so it's quite a workout for me too :)  We aren't too sure what he weighs now (we don't own scales as I find them counter productive for my self esteem) but we are guessing he's about 12 or 13kg.  He has moved up a size in his diapers too - he is now in the "Walker" Huggies. He is a seriously large baby!  Although he has trimmed down a little now that he is crawling and standing up all the time.  This morning was a good example of him motoring around the house. In the space of only about 15 mins he....

Rattled the cage a little bit, then he...

Checked out the chair in the front hall, then he...

Said 'hi' to the bronze buddha, then he...

Took a look at the front door, then he...

Came to say 'hi' to mummy!!

He's a busy little guy.

Standing Tall

Crawling has very quickly led to standing for Mr. Baby!  This has also led to quite a few more bumps as standing leads to falling....  ah well, he is getting the hang of it!  He started pulling himself up on things last week but it has taken me until today to snap a few pics of this achievement. Here he is:

Standing up also means he can reach a LOT more stuff!  Trouble, here we come....

Happy Snaps

Just a few cute photos of Mr. Baby out-and-about in his daily life to make up for the slackness of my blogging the last couple of weeks.

Look at that beautiful (toothless still) smile!

Trying really, really hard to stand up

A self portrait with mummy

Wearing my new shoes out!

Just doin' some laundry :)