Alex's 3rd birthday tour - part 1 Melbourne

official candle blowing ceremony

In a move normally reserved for royals - Alex chose to take a tour to celebrate his birthday - with celebrations on multiple dates down the eastern seaboard. The tour began with a trip to Melbourne where his Alexness was accommodated by the most wonderful Theodossiou / Braun family and the lady Emily. During his time in Melbourne Alex visited local attractions, got up close and personal with local flora and fauna at a trip to the zoo and supported the local economy by paying far to much for a punnet of hand picked strawberries. As you can see by the photos below all celebrations were thoroughly dignified and proper...

When touring it's important for one to sample
the local produce

and I mean sample...

Definitely no fun happening in this picture

The inevitable nude royal snap!

Sometimes one just has to take the wheel

Getting close to nature - and the lovely Lady Emily

A train journey to forget and a christmas to remember

This year we decided to have Christmas as a proper holiday for everyone, without any of the family needing to cook and more importantly clean up a big Christmas meal. Grandpa picked Coffs Harbour as it was vaguely between the various family members (on mum's side anyway).

We somewhat foolishly decided to catch the train up to Coffs, "it will be an adventure" we told ourselves, "more interesting than a plane" we assured ourselves.

This was true for the first 7.5 hours of the 9 hour trip. Then Alex had what could only be described as a meltdown. He was overtired, scared of the noisy dark train and wanted out of there - fast. Well, he's a toddler, the other passengers will be understanding You might think but - you'd be wrong.

OK, so it was about 1am when the aforementioned meltdown occurred and the other passengers were more keen to try and sleep than listen to our darling Alex scream the train down. Surprising I know. Even the guard was less than sympathetic offering sound advice such as "can't you give him something to suck to keep him quiet". "He's almost 3 years, not 3 months old - but thanks"

In the end we had to escape the evil glares of our fellow passengers by traveling in the noisy area , between the carriages which only served to terrify Alex even further.

But we survived and arrived at a lovely resort with pools, tennis courts, playgrounds and our fantastic serviced apartment filled with family and lots of presents for Alex. The horrors of the train journey were forgotten as Alex embraced the buffet breakfast - and lunch - and dinner...

Back in New Zealand

I can hardly believe that it's been over a year since we were living happily in New Zealand - there we were for three long lounging months of summer; going to the beach; walking up the mount and generally having a lovely time with Nanna B with not a care in the world and our Sydney adventures still to come.

So now we return for a couple of well earned weeks rest after lots of work and more tummy bugs, coughs and snotty noses than you can count on one hand, which is perpetually clutching a tissue.

A windy beach walk with Aunty Jan & Nanna B

It's amazing how quickly you can switch off from all the work worries and slip back into doing very little. Alex recognised Nanna at the airport and was immediately very comfortable at her house which makes me thinks he remembers it, even just a little bit. He's spending his time climbing up and down the stairs, chasing the pussy cat every chance he gets and hanging out with his (2nd) cousins Ruby and Jackson. He's becoming very good at saying 'Jaxshon' although 'Boobie' he still struggles with.

The backpack, up and safe from slobbery dogs

We also bought a backpack for him to travel in when we go for walks which he loves. Haydn and I walked up Mount Maunganui with him in it, admittedly I had the easy ride as I didn't have a 12kg+ toddler on by back. Well, I say that he 'loves it' there was one moment where he was strapped into the backpack but dad hadn't picked him up yet and a very friendly dog came up and gave Alex a big lick across the face, he wasn't such a fan of the backpack at that moment....


We've been having daily walks on the beach with Nanna B and Aunty Jan and the weather, which keeps promising storms and rain has been lovely and sunny the whole time we've been here.

Boats and birds and booties...

Ok, been meaning to catchup on some recent adventures, where Alex has met Kookaburra's, boats, practiced lots and of steps, lost a shoe in the mangroves and mud, had aforementioned shoe rescued by his heroic mamma and probably other things I can't remember because it's been a while and I really should have done this blog post a few weeks ago.

Anyway, it's really all about the photos isn't it?

Stair master!

 

Alex meets the locals - who get increasingly daring over the weekend, at one stage stealing a sausage straight from the BBQ.

Being swallowed by his life jacket.

It's kind of like the bath... Just much bigger

Special thanks goes to Captain Ian and First Officer Sandra for organisng such a fantastic long weekend and keeping us afloat! We had a ball, even if we didn't catch any fish.

Location:Hawksbury River, NSW

the holy grail

 I've found it

The answer to my problems

The holy grail of toddler hair cutting.

Not sure if watching TV and driving is a good lesson in safe
driving

Kidiz is a kids hair salon where the little people sit in little cars - that's right with actual wheels in them - watch their own personal TV featuring Dora videos while a friendly chap with an emo (that's Emo not Elmo) haircut quietly chops off their locks while they barely notice.

You might remember our last visit to the hairdresser. Trust me, the post and photos represent about 5% of the trauma of that experience.

We even had time to try some "Emo" styling

Let me take you through the experience at Kidiz. Alex excitedly gets into his little yellow car, adjusts the mirrors, turns the wheels and settles into watching his personalized Dora the Explorer video. Mum, hiding behind the next chair nervously watches as the smiling young man with the trendy hair gets his scissors out. He snips, he shapes, he thins, he styles, he even puts some child sized product through Alex's hair and not a groan, a peep, a wimper from Alex. Until...


It's all over and we have to take him out of the car.

Ta da! The finished product

But that didn't last long and best of all Alex no longer needs to sweat profusely behind an ever encroaching mop of scraggly blond hear. 

Alex vs the bear

What happens when a toddler meets a teddy bear almost his size?

Toddler 1 - Bear 0

Gold coasting

Add caption

oops... just found a post from November I didn't publish...

Here are some pictures from our (not so) recent trip to visit Amma in the Gold Coast. With special guests Uncle Adam, Aunty Chrissie, Toby & Fudgey (bears) and more...

Not happy with the celebration noises.

Hanging out with uncle Adam

Supporting the GC 2018 bid

Relaxing at Amma's apartment

A bit of driving with Bob

Hopping mad

Mum and baby Roo in the back yard

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."

On the beach

View from the house

Beach vegetation

Alex meets three chilly sisters

Alex poses with the three sisters in Katoomba

This weekend Alex, Dad, Nanna B and I had a lovely relaxing long weekend in the Blue Mountains. Alex got to wear his new lovingly Nanna-knitted hat, cosy jacket and toasty moccasins as we visited Katoomba, Wentworth Falls and a few lovely eating establishments along the way.

We stayed in a lovely old cottage and Alex adapted well to his new environment. The cottage was based around a cosy lounge room with doors going to the kitchen, and both bedrooms. Alex was amused by his, and our, ability to exit from one door and then arrive in the same room by an entirely different door. This from a little man who will basically be programming his own iPhone by the time he's two.

The only slight disaster of the trip was mum and dad forgetting his travel cot. So we unintentionally introduced bubba to sleeping in a big kids bed (thankfully one that was very low to the ground). Results were mixed, he didn't exactly fall out of bed, instead he would sit up in the middle of the bed, look around confused by his new found freedom and lack of bars and then cry.

I'm sure there is a nice parable here about why the caged bird sings but I can't think of it just yet. Instead here are some photos from the weekend.

techno baby

Here baby Alex, all of 16 months, demonstrates his expertise with the iPad at a cafe in the Blue Mountains this weekend. Notice the concentration on the little man's face, and the ease with which he navigates his way around the touch screen.

If the camera had still been running you would also have noticed the tears ad we took it away from him because lunch had arrived.

Toddler fond of throwing his food + expensive gadget = I don't know but I wasn't going to find out.

We will soon be confirming Alex's hourly IT and technical support rates - special deal for family, friends and blog followers.

A lil' bit country...

Alex in his suitable 'country' attire

This weekend Alex and family and a couple of friends left the big smoke behind and headed way out into the wilds of the Australian countryside. OK... slight exaggeration. We drove about 2 hours away and stayed a night in a nice country hotel in Bowral. Where we wondered around the shops, ate yummy food and generally lazed about before packing up the raft of baby related paraphernalia and heading home. But was nice to get away, if only for a night and show Alex and Nanna B that there is more to Australia than the Sydney they've seen so far.

little cat burglar

Kangaroo Valley - Mean nanna won't
let me crawl out onto the street

But I'm over it now

 

The big day approaches

Well, actually there are a few big days approaching, and one is happening today. This morning Haydn (aka Dadda - Alex is pretty good at telling the difference these days) started his new job.

It's great news really, a good company, interesting job and it only took him a couple of weeks to find it which is good for the bank balance.

But it's also the official end to our lovely, luxurious, long holiday together and back to reality. I realize most new families don't get the opportunity to spend such a solid block of splendid, sunshiny time together, without the pesky interruptions of a job and all that real life stuff. Most babies don't get the pleasure of undivided attention from both mum and dad (and various nannas, cousins, aunts and uncles) for close to 5 months. And we SOOOO appreciated it.

I know it's a cliche but all good things must come to an end eventually and more adventures lay ahead. The fact is we won't have as much time with our gorgeous bundle of joy over the coming months, so the time we have together will have to be that bit more special.

The Littlest Hobaby

Dear Baby Alex,
I have something to tell you, you see, we're moving again. Please don't be sad. I know you might feel that your babyhood is a bit like an episode of 'The Littlest Hobo'. You arrive in a new place, bright-eyed, tail wagging. You make friends with the locals, you solve some crimes, everyone in the village falls for your furry charm and just when people are thinking you're here to stay you're gone again.

I know it doesn't seem fair to leave the lovely Nanna B and beautiful New Zealand but there's this thing called 'money' and these things called 'jobs' which enable you do pay this thing called 'rent' and eventually get one of these things called 'mortgages'.

Seems ridiculous to you I'm sure. Can't we just stay here and play all day and eat iced lollies and mush banana into the carpet? you ask. Well, your Dada and I would love to do that but alas the aforementioned money, jobs, rent and mortgages are calling and eventually holidays have to end.

I think you'll like Sydney... really.  

Love,

Mama xx

P.S
In case you don't remember The Littlest Hobo, this is sure to jog your memory:

There's a voice that keeps on calling me
Down the road, that's where I'll always be.
Every stop I make, I make a new friend,
Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.

Lovely visitors

Here are a few photos from our recent (ish) visitors. Theo, Rachel and the gorgeous Emily came to stay for just over a week and it was just fantastic to have them. The bubs seemed to get on well, although I think Em kind of tolerated Alex while Alex got very excited, sometimes too excited when he saw Em (see photo above where he decided to show his enthusiasm by whacking her on the head and Theo had to gently restrain him). But generally they are babies with very similar temperaments - which helps I guess. 

So we explored all that Mount Maunganui had to offer, walking around and up the mountain, visiting the beach, the hot pools and had a picnic on the harbour. We also went to Lake Taupo and enjoyed boat trips of the slow ferry variety and the fast jet boat type and developed an unhealthy obsession with honey ice cream.

We also proved that you can have a wonderful joint family holiday with two babies in tow. Hopefully this will be the first of many family trips together.

Rach & Theo embracing their 'inner bee' in Taupo

Em giving Alex crawling lessons
(he started a few days later)

Picnic at Pilot Bay - Mount Maunganui

Baby Swap

Eye Spy

eye spy 'puss' at the mount

 Eye spy with my little eye something beginning with C.

C for Cat. Alex has discovered his little furry feline friends with a good dollop of enthusiasm of late. It started with the somewhat fraidy-cat 'Puss' at Nanna B's house. For the first couple of months Puss has been far too terrified of baby Alex to emerge from her hiding place under the house, except when hunger provides some temporary courage. Recently she has ventured out a little more, mainly to sniff around under Alex's high chair for any tasty leftovers. This amuses young master Butler no end, and the chances of him actually eating go down to almost nothing.

Poor Violet in Auckland

During our visit to Auckland this weekend a more courageous cat provided Alex with some much needed crawling incentive. That is until Violet (the cat in question) retreated to the top of her scratch poll thingy to escape from baby Alex's advances.   

Keeping myself busy over the holidays

With the unique combination of lots of free time and lots of help with bubba I've felt the desire to be productive with my spare time. Do things to better myself, and perhaps better the world as well. What could I do? Volunteer my services to a worthwhile cause? Take a correspondence course in quantum physics? Even work on my CV so I can actually get a job when we get to Australia?

No... instead I perfected the art of making a gingerbread house. This included carefully cutting out and building several cardboard models, baking a half size prototype a week before Christmas and then creating the final product as unveiled during our BBQ on boxing day.

If you're interested this is the recipe I settled on

And here's the finished product, I even roped Haydn in to do some decorating and uncle Adam to do some structural consulting when the roof wouldn't sit on the foundation...

The final product of my Christmas baking efforts

Bubba's first Christmas

Yayee - presents!

Alex discovered the true joy of Christmas on the 25th... well, sort of.

The Arden-Wood family, Grandpa, Amma and uncle hOb all arrived from Australia to spend Christmas with the Butlers, while uncle Adam and auntie Chrissy also joined us on Christmas day. So Alex was able to spend the day with all his favourite people, all competing for the attentions and the odd sneaky hug from the youngest member of our family.

Like any good Christmas there was more food that we could possibly eat, Nanna B did an outstanding job, catering for the wide and varied tastes of all the visitors. Alex had a nibble on pretty much everything, he's getting very good at feeding himself now and will generally stare at me grumpily with his big blue eyes if I'm daring to eat without offering any to him.

And then of course there was the presents, approximately 9 in every 10 gifts exchanged on the day were for baby Alex. Presents elicited responses ranging from vague disinterest through to outright fear - with the occasional smile and squeal of excitement for good measure. Of course the moments of pure Christmas joy and excitement were reserved for the wrapping paper and the occasional bow. Meanwhile I've hidden away most of the new toys so he can appreciate them a new over the next few months.

By the end of the day Alex was exhausted and more than a bit grumpy (for him anyway). Haydn and I are now looking forward to next Christmas, or perhaps the one after that when Alex really appreciates the joy of Christmas... beyond just the wrapping.

OK... I'm over presents now

Byron Baby

Here are a few photos from the last leg of our Australian trip, where we stayed with Amma on the gold coast, had a lovely trip to a slightly soggy Byron Bay and visited the lovely Kate in Brisbane.


A tasty brunch and the morning papers in Byron


It's never too cold for a quick walk on the sand


A quick visit with Kate in Brisbane