Local color

In no particular order, and since I keep forgetting to finish taking pictures of the house, some other stuff that we've been doing to distract you.

At the Perth Royal Show (which is extremely similar to the Ekka) FFM rode his first carousel. He's also had his first professional haircut and looks quite dashing but the responsible parent I try to be he's got his hat on to protect his fair little head so you really can't see it.

Here we are having a go feeding some baby farm animals. FFM's response to the animals was quite different than at the Ekka, he was excited and tried to pet all of them, chickens included. I think being able to stand and walk around and away from the animals makes a big difference.


Thanks to Katie for such nice photos! We trooped all through the Royal Show with the Edsalls who all survived and even came away with a few showbags.CRAYONS! Even though the package warns that crayons are meant for 24mos+ FFM is ready for them now. He's in a stage of mimicking everything we do and that includes taking any writing instrument he can reach and trying to scribble with it. After pulling a pen out of his hand for the umpteenth time in a day (he's tall and can reach amazing places, I'm not just leaving pens laying about) I decided there wasn't any reason he couldn't just scribble away with appropriate tools. ooooohhhhh, it was so quiet and he concentrated so much he even forgot to stick them in his mouth.

The weekend before the Perth Royal show we went to a huge park here in the city called King's Park. It's got botanical gardens, a treetop walk, huge wild open spaces, and even a couple of playgrounds. The day we went was so windy the treetop walk was closed, but the spring wildflowers were cooperating nicely and were being very showy. Travis got some nice shots.

Connected

Yahoo! I am CONNECTED again! Being without internet for two weeks is not the end of the world, but being my best mode of communication with family and friends who are scattered on pretty much every continent (except Antarctica, no one's there right now) it's made me miss visiting with everyone.

More to come soon, but it took my blessedly patient husband three hours tonight to get us up and running with a suitable home network :) This after a bit of a saga which included problems with my accent interfering with the automatic computer, mail that we couldn't get to since we had no mailbox key, and two different days sitting and waiting 'between 8-1' or 'between 12-5' for a technician to show up.

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.