The World's Largest Pepper Mill

This week Finn met his first relative. Travis' mom Penny arrived on Tuesday morning for a visit aka helpmoveandbabysit. She's already been a huge help. It's amazing how much difference one more pair of hands makes. No matter how jet lagged they are.

Penny also is now the proud owner of The World's Largest Pepper Mill. Won at the AWCD Penny Raffle on Thursday. We pooled our money and bought a pile of tickets and 'bid' on a few items for each of us. Penny won The World's Largest Pepper Mill and a pedometer and I didn't win anything :( The World's Largest Pepper Mill is already packed, I should have gotten a picture of it. It's got to be two feet tall and is filled with a lifetime supply of peppercorns. Maybe if she repacks I'll see if I can snap a shot.

The house here is an absolute disaster area but by Monday we'll have a bit more room to move around. The movers come to take our things away for our 130ft3 shipment (not as big as it sounds) on Monday and the piles in the living room will go away and we can live our last few days here without stepping around heaps of stuff. Of course that's because we won't have any stuff. The movers will pack for us but expect that I will have sorted and set aside our stuff from the furnished apt stuff. I have two piles, one to go into storage in Denver and one of stuff that will continue on to Australia with us. Bless my family for their faith in my organizational skills, who knows what we'll actually end up with when we finally land in Oz two months from now! Meanwhile we'll keep shifting boxes so we can open and close doors and moving heaps so we can navigate the narrow pathways between living room and kitchen.

Baby weight update: 9.7kg or 21.4lbs at 20 weeks (four months+two weeks). Clothing size = some 9-12 but mostly 12-18mos. Just bought size 4 diapers. Travis jokes that we buy diaper sizes by the month age that he is. Except he really never fit into size 1.

I'm getting a bit melancholy about leaving Dublin, I will miss so many of my friends. At the same time it's also exciting to think about meeting new friends and going to a new place. With a stop at home to see family, shop at Sunflower, and to gorge on loads of Mexican food first :)

Hi Ho it's off to Brisbane we go

Yup, the cat's out the bag! We've got the process underway for a move to Australia. Brisbane is a major city on the east coast of Australia, north of Sydney. It looks like we are headed out for another 18 month assignment, although it's not expected that we'll be in Brisbane the whole time. The remainder of our time in Australia will be spent in a different city, to be named at a later date.

So in about 10 days we'll ship out of Dublin and head back to Colorado. Then a long week in Phoenix to visit Brother Q and his SO Karen. All three of us go back to CO for a week and then Travis ships off to Oz. Finn and I will stay in CO while Travis gets his bearings and does some house hunting, and then he'll come back to CO the week before Christmas. Sometime in January we'll all head down for our permanent relocation.

We're VERY excited about the move. We've come across a number of Aussies here in Ireland and the feedback about Brisbane is all extremely positive. Poor Finn's going to completely miss out on spring! We'll leave fall here, get straight into winter in Colorado, and it will be summer in Australia by the time we get there. No spring for Finn this year, although he can claim going to three continents before turning 1.

Happy Halloween

In case you're not sure, he's the pumpkin baby on the far right :)

Adventures of a Really Big Baby

Lots of things going on.
Finn's 4 months old today. Whew.

Finn got weighed a week ago, 20lbs. That's pretty healthy. The public health nurse said she's won't be angry with me but he really shouldn't eat sweet things (not joking, she really said that). He doesn't even like sweet things, so we've got that covered. Those of you who know me well know I'm not really much of a fruit fan, I'll eat an apple or banana occasionally but really would rather have a carrot stick or some other veg. Turns out that contrary to most babies Finn, like me, prefers veg to fruit. When starting solids most babies love the sweet fruit and you have to talk them into eating the veg. Travis thinks it's hilarious, he tried a mango banana puree with Finn this weekend and quickly followed it up with the spinach/basil after a mini (and messy) temper tantrum.
Some of the challenges of being a really big, yet still very young baby include:

• In the pack-n-play you probably should be sleeping in the bassinet as you can't roll over or sit up but the bassinet is only rated to 15lbs and is quite saggy now (it's a long way for your parents to reach to the lower level since you can't assist by sitting up-plus you're heavy). Good thing dad's an engineer and engineered a solution.


• Your really cool swing, which is your favorite toy, starts to swing really really slowly EVEN on it's highest speed EVEN with brand new batteries because you are starting to be too big for it.


• Your stroller system is designed to be a 'pram' or carry cot for the first few months until you can sit up on your own so the seat part (what we Americans would think of as the traditional stroller) is rated for babies 6 months and older. But you've exceed the weight limit on the carry cot which is 15lbs.


• You are four months old and wearing 9-12 and 12-18 month clothes. This isn't a challenge, except when your mom forgets to put a bigger onsie and outfit in the diaper bag and you have to do a clothes change and not snap the leg snaps :)

The Bumbo is quite popular now. And we use it properly, on the floor. And yes, we've heard about the recall. And yes, we still use it on the table to feed Finn but we don't wander off around the house leaving our infant child to arch his back and fall out of the Bumbo onto the floor while we're doing our own thing. When it's on the table we sit at the table, well within arms reach, where if he starts to look like he might flip out we'd be paying enough attention to catch him. Seriously, I'm amazed at the things people sue over. Travis loves this picture and thinks it looks like a baby barcalounger. All Finn needs is a can of Miller.

This weekend was a holiday weekend here in Ireland! Hooray! Travis didn't even get called in to work, extra hooray! Today was the Dublin Marathon and the course went on the street in front of our apartments. I checked online to see appx when the runners might be coming by as this was at mile 23 (of 26 miles) and we timed a trip to the grocery store so we could walk there and back while watching the marathon. We got to see the leaders in the elite women, men, and disabled classes all go by and we're pretty sure we saw the leader of the general pack go by, too. There were pace cars with a giant clock on top that drove in front of the leaders of the elite and handicap classes that continually announced the leader, so it wasn't hard to miss. Here's Finn and Travis watching the marathon (Finn's a little sleepy here but he did catch some of it, the colorful jerseys were quite interesting to him). If you can't tell that's Finn in the tiny orange hat (it's a pumpkin) and signature sunglasses just peeking out over the top of the Baby Bjorn cover.

The weather was unbelievable this weekend, it's really been nice for months now. I'm starting to forget that it rained all summer.... has been a truly lovely autumn. Just less than three weeks to go and we should be able to announce our new destination any day now.

Popeye

New food today, spinach.

New trick, stuffing food and fingers into mouth simulatneously.

It got way messier after the photo but I liked this one the best. Just look at that nose and teeny tongue licking off those fingers!

So far Finn's been so interested in the concept of nutrition from a spoon instead of a bottle that he's forgotten to stick his fingers in his mouth. Today he got all excited about the spinach AND his fingers. (PS the spinach is really spinach, basil, and parsnip and I tasted it, it's really really good! http://www.plum-baby.co.uk/our-recipes/ ).