The Day We Were Glad We Childproofed

First - a recap of recent adventures. We toured the world famous Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter, Steve 'Crikey!' Irwin. It's a really nice zoo, full of native animals. We've been to several places now that do a great job of getting you up close to the native fauna, but this was the first time we got to see the elusive echinida! Below, with someones feet for scale. They are prickly like a porcupine and move really fast. And one of my favorites, the wombat. They're just so durn cute! This one had just come back from a walk around the zoo, with harness and leash and everything. Still reluctant to let FFM pet (ie pull all the fur off) the koalas, we let him get a little closer this time. And the Tasmanian Devil getting afternoon tea. We asked, they really only are found on the little island of Tasmania off the south east coast of mainland Australia. Their pink ears turn bright red when they get angry/agitated.
At the zoo Travis gave FFM some licks of his lemon popsicle...which was of course a huge hit. Not being excited about giving our 9 month old frozen sugar on a stick but still reluctant to deny him what was obviously a big treat, I tried a healthier alternative. Yogurt on a spoon! I froze blobs of yogurt in ice cube trays and stuck spoons into them. After the initial - uh, Mom, exactly WHAT do you want me to eat? it was just as popular as the sugary one.
Today...the day I'm glad we spent a couple of bucks on the little plastic plugs for the outlets. Power here is 240v - a bit more juice than the 110v out of the wall in the US. Today FFM crawled over to the wall to inspect those nifty little sockets to see what they are all about. Note the footstool in front of the bookcase, also a childproofing measure 1) to keep him from pulling all the books out and 2) to keep him from pulling the bookcase down since we can't screw it to the rental apt wall.

A little video of some crawling. Not true crawling yet, but for about two weeks now we've had army style commando crawling. I haven't been able to get a good video, whenever I pull out the camera he stops to check out what I'm doing. He's much faster than this shot, but it's about the best I can get. He's crawling toward the stroller, he's got a total obsession with the stroller wheels.

And another video, this one is actually about a month old (oops!) and is swimming. There's a dunk, after which you'll see a funny face. This is simply annoyance that Dad's interrupted splashing time. FFM's great underwater, although only remembers to close his mouth about half the time so sometimes we have a pretty waterlogged little guy at the end of swimming. We do swim lessons once a week, Aussies are superb about water safety and getting kids of all ages into the pool.