Absent

Please excuse my absence - I have no internet connection :( I was in queue to get one and something in the world of installations went awry and now I'm waiting for them to send me something in the mail that I have to send back and then get back in queue again.....

I'm borrowing internet now and promise to be back as soon as possible!

We're moved in, the townhouse is turning out better than expected, and Travis' commute is less than 10 min on foot. It's in a nice neighborhood, it reminds us a bit of my mom's neighborhood in Denver-established, close to some shopping, and light commercial (ie Travis' office).

FFM is walking all the time now and bumping into things all the time, lots of bruises for our little guy and first bloody lip, too. He's loving all his space - he gets a huge room and his very own playroom at the new house. Pictures as soon as all the boxes are gone!

Suds

You know it's time to get out of your dumpy hotel apartment when you arrive home to find that the housekeepers filled the dishwasher with laundry detergent and now your kitchen is full of suds. True story.

U-Turn

Perhaps the obsession with the camera has taken a back seat to the pastime of the moment - bipedal locomotion...

My mom asked for more photos...but only video does this justice.

Special thanks to Leo who really helped FFM gain the confidence that fateful day at swimming school when he led him across the pool deck and then let go...FFM never even noticed and just started trucking along to follow his buddy.

This has all come about really in the last week or so. It's amazing to me how quickly he went from a crawly baby to a toddling toddler. He still crawls, he is very very fast at it, but now most often will crawl to a table or couch to pull himself up so he can walk to where he's going. The downside - he's not as pliable when we carry him anymore and voices his opinion when he's in the stroller and would rather be walking.

Farewell Brisbane

It's a little different scene than when we left Dublin. We felt like we just didn't have nearly as much stuff (which we didn't) and we weren't nearly as tired or bleary eyed. If you took away the two strollers, car seat, and pack and play it was a perfectly reasonable pile of luggage for three people who were moving across country. (our big stroller has it's own suitcase and it's a giant black thing that's taking up 1/3 of the trolley).

We're in a long-stay hotel in Perth right now. It's a bit gloomy but in a nice part of town. We hit the grocery store last night and drove around to look at the outside of some townhouses the relocation agent sent to us last week to get a feel for the neighborhoods. It's nice having a few things ticked off the list already - no new mobile phones this move, the cable is already sorted we just have to call to get our account turned back on when we move in, and we are familiar with the grocery store chains and how to navigate them.

Already it seems Perth is not quite the pedestrian city inner Brisbane or Dublin was, FFM and I will be adjusting to life with a car as our plan is that Travis will find his own way to work by bus/train/bike/foot or some combination thereof. Something new for everyone!

In kiddo news, FFM is a true toddler, wobbling his way between walls and furniture all over the place. Last week he started taking more than just a couple of steps at a time between T and I, and just a few days ago he started letting go of furniture and taking off on his own. We've stopped counting the number of consecutive steps, and now count how far he goes in yards (or meters). He thinks his new perspective is hilarious and toddles along laughing uproariously along the way.

On my last full day in Brisbane Mom finally let me pet a kangaroo

Oh my, he was much more excited about this than the photo shows.

We took a boat cruise to the koala sanctuary with Sara and Cooper. The boys were pretty rowdy on the way there.

Sara knows just how to pet the kangaroos, she's a kangaroo whisperer.And lastly some snippets from this weekend's Riverfire - a purely decadent event where Brisbane puts on a fireworks show just for the fun of it.

Cooper's family and our friend Leo (and his parents) came for a visit. FFM was pretty happy to have his buds around.

The city buildings get all 'decked' out with nifty lights for the event.

The scope of these fireworks was amazing, there's a giant horseshoe bend in the river where we live, and we could see the THREE barges of fireworks in front of us (I only catch one in the video) AND the barges across the city on the river on the other side of the horseshoe. Fireworks are shot off of two bridges and the tops of the city skyscrapes. The show starts and ends with an F111 fighter jet screaming through the city doing a fuel dump which leaves a streak of flame across the sky. I caught a tiny bit of it in the video (which is the end of the show but I posted first since it's the better one and if you're only going to watch one watch that one. However to get the idea of the true breadth and scope you've really got to see the second one). Make sure you've turned the volume down, these are a bit loud.