Determination

Do these groceries seem heavier than usual?

shopping in style

I know what you're thinking, no blog update for over two weeks and this is the best you can do? A photo of baby Alex, sitting in my shopping cart in our lounge room. Well - I'll tell you this.

No.

That's not the best I can do.

The best I can do is give you a video of Alex in my shopping cart, being dragged around the lounge room by his dad.

So there!

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.

Attack of the tickle monster

Just located, some very rare footage of the little known but much reviled 'tickle monster'. As you can see the footage is a little shaky, no doubt the camera(wo)man got a little concerned for their safety during the attack.

Winter sun

When we decided to make the move from the UK to Australia we often pointed to 'better weather' as one of the big temptations of the southern hemisphere. In my head I guess I'd always been thinking about summer. The English summer is anything but reliable and every time I'd come back home on holiday over the last 11 years, its usually been in February - universally agreed as the most rubbish month to be in the UK, and always guaranteed hot weather in Sydney. 

Over the past couple of weeks I've realised it's not summer that makes the real difference between Sydney and London it is actually winter. The last two weekends we've enjoyed crisp clear blue skies, warming sun and generally lovely outdoor, picnic, walk and ferry catching weather.  And it's the middle of winter!

In summer months we now have to worry about Alex's whiter than white delicate skin, while in winter the sun isn't so harsh and we can spend time outdoors without needing to wrap him up like the Michelin baby to protect him from the wet and windy European winter.

It's a win win for winter!

My future's so bright - I've got to wear Nanna's shades

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

 

Hair harassed

what have you done to me?

Alex had a first visit to the hairdresser this afternoon. And to put it bluntly, it didn't go well. There were tears, there was yelling, there was a look of genuine dismay from the little man towards his encouraging but ultimately useless mother. There was super fast scissor work from the slightly frazzled hairdresser and there were blond curls everywhere!

And we got there - in about 6 1/2 minutes.

And once it was over we were all smiles again.

Alex is now transformed, sans long flowing locks and bouncy curls, into an entirely different baby. I barely recognise the little man whose emerged with the neat (ish) hairstyle and the less girly good looks.

He definitely looks older. Either that or he looks younger. Or it might be shorter and chubbier. One or the other or both.

And you... you're not helping!

All better 5 minutes later