Rock and Roll vs maths

Recently Alex's passions have recently run beyond the pleasures of counting. Although it's still difficult to walk down the street without Alex doing a blow by blow account of every house number, license plate and roadside speed limit - over the past few months he has discovered the joy of music.


This video was taken a few months back at his friend Lily's birthday - but he's been rocking out and jamming with the new family band (Alex on keyboard, Mum on drums, Daddy or Nanna on guitar) ever since. Unfortunately I have to clear all videos with his agent so it might take a bit longer to get a new musical post.

little Hendrix

Art

Ever since Alex developed his fascination with the iPad we have discovered little digital presents from him in surprising places, for example, I find a message in the notepad application that simply says gfdjkl and nothing else. Occasionally he deletes the notes or actions I've taken for work which is not ideal and I guess the parent equivalent to a "dog ate my homework" excuse for not doing the actions from that particular meeting.

Most recently we have been finding random photos and videos appearing on the iPad, frequently of the floor, or a wall, but sometimes they are amusing or what could only be called art.

I've included a selection of works from Alex's first exhibition which he's calling "gfdjkl"















This series is especially amusing I think...

One day I'll grow up to be...

A racing car driver?

A DJ?

A dancer?

All three...

At once!

OK... I'll just be a toddler for now.

Sewing the seeds...

We're already seeing dangerous signs of the future from young Alex. We predict an addictive personality with a potentially unreasonable obsession with all things... Apple.

And unfortunately I don't mean the fruit, or the record label for that matter.

It all started with our iPhone's. Possibly due to him seeing mum and dad using theirs most of the day and night, Alex loves to play with them. He puts it against his ear and says what sounds suspiciously like 'hello,' he already knows how to unlock the screen by pressing the button and sliding the bar across, he has a wide selection of aps installed on Mum's phone and even has his own iPhone (my old 3g from the UK permanently set to aeroplane mode).

We make sure any phone he's playing with is not connected to the network when he's playing with it, to protect his little brain from any wireless nasties and to protect our bank balance from an accidental call to Romania. 

A baby on a mission, so many shiny gadgets so little time

It looks like the obsession doesn't end with the smaller gadget in the range, on Friday lucky mum got an iPad2 for her birthday - it seems that it's really like a birthday present for bubba. He LOVES the big shiny new iPad and is genuinely shocked and mortified when one of the adults in the house wants to use his wonderful new toy.

Mum and dad are only encouraging the obsession by bringing said addict to the source a few weeks ago - by which I mean the apple store in Sydney - where he crawled around the store, blew raspberries on the nice clean glass windows and practised his walking between the gadgets.

We can only hope that by the time Alex is big enough to write his Christmas list to Santa, Apple have gone out of business and colouring pencils are all the rage.

Final Farewell

Our last few days in London saw more goodbyes. This time to people we'd only known a few months but would miss very much. It's strange to think that a snap decision to chose a particular anti natal class on a Tuesday evening meant we got to meet some fantastic people. It turned out that all the women in our NCT class were quite high flying career wise but we didn't find that out for several months, instead I discovered a group of incredibly open, sharing, generous and funny people and fantastic mothers.

I also got to spend time with their gorgeous bubbas and see them develop their own unique personalities, even though none are even 9 months old yet. As I sit in my hotel room in Bali, on our way to the next stage in our adventure with our own bubba I'm imagining what all these beautiful babies might become one day.

• Starting with Nicholas the feisty and flirty Italian, I'll have to say professional footballer, if only to keep his dad happy.
  
• The lovely Sarah with her calm considered nature and wise eyes, I'm sure it's not just because she's the oldest in out little group. Perhaps a psychologist, she seems like she'll be a good listener.
  
• Poppy with her always smiling face might put her inquisitiveness to good use a journalist or reporter maybe.
• Dilys is clearly the adventurer in the group, always wriggling, always on a mission somewhere, at this stage usually to knock down a stack of blocks her mum had just built.
  
• When I think of Tilly I think of her in the garden with the big lovable sheepdog Barclay by her side. Tilly will be the nature dwelling animal lover to me.

Of course the truth is they will probably be doing jobs that haven't even been invented yet but either way, I hope somehow we will still be in touch with everyone to find out.