Last weekend the family and some friends had a long weekend on the South Coast. Before we arrived we'd read that there were kangaroos near where we were staying. "Perhaps we'll catch a glimps of one" we said to each other beforehand, enthusiastically. Alex hasn't see one of Australia's famous bouncy friends yet. Let's not hold our breath we thought, we might see one dart by in the bush nearby.
Well we needn't have been concerned. Driving into the street and past the house we'd hired for the weekend we found a front yard littered - literally littered (which is quite hard to say) with kangaroos. Many of them had joeys in their pouches and concerned protective daddy kangaroos standing guard nearby. The adults in the (human) group were very excited - the smaller member of the crew less so, until one of the little joeys wriggled himself out of his mums pouch and bounced off across the yard and down the road. This was by all accounts one of the most exciting things young master Butler had ever seen. He grinned and giggled as the kangaroo hopped along the lawn and then back to the safety of mum and dad Roo.
A little later in the weekend I decided to try being a kangaroo myself - bouncing around in front of Alex - well this was almost as exciting and he insisted I did it again and again with enthusiastic waving of arms up and down.
It turns out being a kangaroo is hard work. I'm thinking of starting a new exercise/dance graze - "Roomba."
Stanley (the bear on the left) is new to Alex's posse and is fast becoming one of Bubbas favourite pals.. the bonus is that his bear-crew gets some much needed 'urban' cred...
When we first moved into this flat in Sydney Alex's FAVOURITE place to 'hang' was the kitchen. More specifically he would pull himself up using the oven door handle and, quite literally hang off the oven.
Recognising that we would need to actually use the oven occasionally the next thing us responsible parents did was go out and buy a safety gate so little hands couldn't burn themselves on aforementioned oven door.
Needless to say this didn't go well, and it goes even less well if both mum and dad find themselves in the kitchen with Alex outside.
Recently he has tried a different tack. Whenever I'm in the kitchen for more than a few minutes he starts to bring me presents. I
like to think of them as offerings to the kitchen gods, in the hope that one day the magical gate will open and let him in to experience the wonder and general fabulousness that awaits within.
