Merry Christmas!

Well another Christmas has come and gone, Merry Christmas to all.

We had a wonderful if busy day. Mitch is not quite at the age where he understands Christmas and indeed was a bit too much for him, he was overwhelmed at times. He received some wonderful gifts, so thank you all for everyone's generosity towards him.

Meeks, Mitch and I celebrated our second Christmas together as a little family. We got to go to church this year which was great, althought it meant an early morning. We actually had to wake Mitch up this morning to open presents. I dare say it will be the last time we have to do that for many years. After church we went and saw Nana and Poppy and then went off to Uncle Mike and Auntie Mandy's place for pre-lunch and then moved on to Ganny and Grand-Dad's for lunch and presents. Finally at the end of the day we popped in at James and Aly's. A very busy day!

We missed Auntie Krissy and Glen and Uncle Jamie and Phaik all in the UK. We hope you all have/had a great day.

I'll put up some photos when I get around to it, but's it's late now. Time to got to sleep!

Merry Christmas again.

Christmas Dinner

We had (Pre) Christmas dinner with Nana and Poppy this evening. As usual Nana cooked up a delicious turkey, ham and baked veges and we all ate ourselves silly.

Before dinner Mitch and Poppy had some time playing together.


Mitch tried some mince pies ...

... and played about in the back garden


Then we all had dinner together.

A morning at the park

After all the wet weather we have been having lately, it was nice to finally have a sunny Saturday morning, so yesterday we went out to Coonanbarra Park in Wahroongah. Mitch had loads of fun in the sand pit.



And then moved on to the slide. He climbed up the ladder all by himself and then slid down without falling off.

Then he tried going up the wrong way.


In other news, I had my first photos to iStockPhoto accepted during the week. At the moment I have 12 images and there are another 11 waiting to be inspected. They're not what you'd call stunning images, especially the "Embarrassing situations series" (there is many more to come in this series), but it's aiming for a market rather than for beauty. No one has bought any yet, but I only have 12 photos out of more than 2.5 million in the collection. I just have to keep on shooting and uploading. Generally people don't start seeing regular sales until you have more than 100 photos in your portfolio.

Joshie's Pirate Party

Mitch went to Joshie's 3rd Birthday Pirate Party on Saturday. He got all dressed up in his pirate gear



Mitchy and Joshie gobbled up the fairy bread

Mitch first picked off and ate the tasty bits.

Then it was time for the birthday cake, an amazing Pirate ship made by Shazzy.

Mitch decided he wanted to change his headgear.

As a result of yesterday Mitch has learnt a new word, "Party!".

Accepted

I got accepted to iStockPhoto, Yay!

My portfolio, when I get around to loading some pictures, will be here.

Christmas starts early!

Well, December began with a removal of the hairy growth that had been crowding my chin, much to the relief of Meeks and Mitch (and me - I don't know how people put up with them). Many thanks to those who sponsored me.

On Saturday I got the tree Christmas tree down from in the roof and Meeks and I decorated it with all the plastic decorations (the special glass ones are in a bowl out of reach) while Mitch was asleep. When Mitch woke up we said, "We've got a surprise for you!". He ran down the hall and into the lounge and ran right past the tree! We said, "Over here Mitchy!" and he looked at us and then looked at the tree and then looked at us and well, generally was a bit underwhelmed. After a little bit he did get more interested and went up and touched the baubles. He pretty much touched every one he could reach. We have a rule, he can touch but he can't pull on them. He seems to understand, and just touches, at least while we're watching him. I suspect if we left him alone with the tree for any period of time we'd come back and he'd have plucked all the low hanging fruit, so to speak!

We tried to get a family photo in front of the tree this afternoon, but Mitch wasn't have a bar of it - admittedly he had just been woken up by me sneezing, which is enough to make anyone grumpy. We got a nice one of the tree though!

Climbing a ladder and new words.

Mitch and I had a fun day yesterday. We went to a park in Asquith where Mitch climbed a ladder onto a play gym for the first time. The ladder was taller than him and was quite an effort to get up. I recorded a video on my mobile which hopefully I'll be able to get onto YouTube at some stage. He was a little uncoordinated at first but after a few tries, he was doing it quite well. He was very proud of himself. He also walked up and down some stairs without holding on which was impressive. He hasn't quite got the hang of jumping off things yet. Rather than jumping with two feet he sort of does an exaggerated step (and shouts out, "Shump!") and then overbalances when he lands and lands on his face and then looks up with surprise as if to say, "What went wrong there?". He's also mastered getting on to slippery dips, which again he's very pleased about.

In other milestones, he has learnt to say, "Please". At first it was only in reply to the question, "What do you say when you want something?", but now he says it on his own. It sounds more like "Peesh", but you get the drift. He has also learnt to recognise and say "Lilly". Again it comes out more like "Wiwi", but you know what he's talking about.

He's also learnt to say "No". Fortunately it's not a cranky, disobedient "No!", it is a very cute sort of questioning "No" in response to a question like "Does Mitchy have a beard?" (for those of you who missed it Daddy has a beard at the moment for Movember - only for a few more days, I'm pretty sick of it and Meeks doesn't like it either. Incidentally, you can partially see the current state of the beard here. I have set up a separate blog for my photography stuff and took this photo playing around with the camera the other day - the subject is a bit of a clown, but I'm happy with the quality of the photo). Mitch also has a funny little "nonono" for when he's being cheeky and he knows it.

So it has been a busy little time for Mitch. He's learning new stuff all the time. It is delightful and fascinating to watch.

Little cutie

Sometimes you have the camera out and Mitchy is playing around and you are lucky enough to take some photos which come out nicely.





The cute photos made up for the disastrous trip to get Mitch's photo taken with Santa at Myer (which is why he was dressed up). He looked at Santa with these big scared eyes and then when he sat on Santa's lap his bottom lip poked out and he looked sadder than we have ever seen him. He didn't wriggle or cry just looked petrified. We've never seen him look like that. Anyway, the whole Santa photo thing was aborted. We may try again another time.

Meeks has another cold. She's just had a nightmare year for colds! I'm not sick and Mitch has a tiny runny nose, but apart from that the rest of us are well.

Slideshow

Blogger just added this cool little widget which runs a slideshow on your blog. If you look over to the right of the page, just under the "Welcome" you can see it cycling through all the photos that are on our Flickr page. If you want a closer look at any of the photos just click on the picture and you will be taken directly to Flickr.

It's been a little while ...

Sorry about not having updates recently. Very slack of me. Not a whole lot has been happening since our holiday finished. Just back at work for both of us. Mitch is learning new stuff all the time, and so are we. In some ways it is funny to watch, but you can't laugh when he's being naughty. We just praise him lots when he does good things. He picked a flower and went and gave it to Meeks the other day. It was a beautiful moment :)

The "mo" is coming along nicely. Again, if you're willing to sponsor me it would be appreciated. There details are here. Both Meeks and I are a bit sick of it, so will be glad when it's gone. It would be nice to get some more sponsors to make it worthwhile!

Meeks has a bit of a crook back at the moment which is no good. So if you can pray for her it would be appreciated.

Krissy in the UK requested a picture of a Jacaranda tree so here it is:

This one is down the street from us. They are in bloom all around Sydney at the moment, but in the UK as it heads towards winter, obviously they are lacking. As usual the one in our front garden does not have a single flower.

I have made my submission for registration to iStockPhoto to be able to sell my photos. I had two out of three images approved, so I just need to submit one more successful one and I'll be accepted. You can read about iStockPhoto here and you can see my portfolio here once I get accepted. As a result I have also been upgrading my image manipulation skills, not so much to change my photos but present them differently. Here are some recent examples. I took the photo then used what is called an alpha-mask (which is a bit of a painstaking process) to isolate them from the background. Quite effective I think!

Cycling at Homebush Bay

On the last day of our holidays (yesterday) we went cycling at Olympic Park at Homebush. It was Meeks' idea and it was a super one. Mitch loved being on the back of the bike although he did a bit of exploring by himself too

We stopped for lunch at a park with some play equipment. Mitch checked it out first and then Mitch and Daddy had a go on the flying fox


After having lunch together we peddled off back to where we hired the bikes and went home quite weary



Finally a panorama of the beach on our holiday to Bateman's Bay

Now this is more like it!

Well, the weather has finally turned pleasant and we are still on holidays. Pity it wasn't like that last week when we were actually away at a beach resort with a pool and sand. To take advantage of it we went to Balmoral and enjoyed the sand and Mitchy and Mummy had a little swim.

Before we went to the beach we visited Dr Wyeth (his name is Barry ... get it Barry Wyeth? Sound familiar? I'll give you a hint "Darling I, can't get enough of your love baby?") Mitch's paediatrician. Mitch is a delightfully normal little 18 month old. He is normal weight, slightly taller than average but apparently has a large head for his size. Apparently this comes from his Mum and Dad - neither of us suspected he we had a big head, but apparently we do. We always though Mitchy had a small head. Oh well, he's normal and healthy and was very well behaved when the doctor was poking and prodding him.

While we were away we tried to count all of Mitchy's words. He can say more than 50 words now, I wont bore you with the whole list, but it's apparently very good for his age. He only really says one word at a time (or the same word over and over) although he has one phrase which is "More cake!" ... cake is anything sweet, whether that actually is cake or he actually means ice cream or yogo or soemthing else - not that he gets a whole lot of any of those, but when he does it goes quickly.

He also has one joke. When we get home in the car, we ask him, "Who lives here?". He knows Mummy and Daddy and Mitchy live here, but he says, "Nana!" instead so we say, "Nooooooooo!" and he laughs and laughs. He's started branching out with his one joke, so now whenever we ask him a question (like "What did you just put in your mouth?" or "Why are you digging in the pot plants?") he replies "Nana!" with a big cheeky grin on his face.

Anyway, back to Balmoral. As you can see the weather was beautiful, here is the familiar arch

and a couple of Mitch playing in the sand


We also made a lot of sand castles for which Mitch had the newly found pleasure of destroying by first stepping on them, saying "Kick! Kick! Kick!" and then squashing them with his belly.

Bateman's Bay

It was under leaden skies that we left for Bateman's Bay on Monday morning and under leaden skies we returned this afternoon. Unfortunately it pretty much rained most of the time so our "beach" holiday didn't quite turn out how we had hoped. This was about as good as it got!

That photo was taken during one of the brief lighter moments. We took advantage of those by going for walks down to the beach. Mitch did lots of running around during those moments to make up for being stuck inside when it was raining.

The highlight was visiting Mogo Zoo one morning when it wasn't raining too much. Mogo Zoo is about 10 minutes drive south of Bateman's Bay. Mitchy loved seeing all the animals. There were some friendly animals:



And some big cats:



Mitchy took whatever vantage point he could get:

So it was good to get away, but a lot of the time we were stuck inside wishing we could go and play ...

... outside!

And that is the story of our holiday to Bateman's Bay.




Okay ... a couple more animal pictures:

Sydney Aquarium

Today was the first day of our holidays and it was raining (and it looks like it's pretty much going to rain for the rest of our holidays) so we decided to have some indoor fun and went to the Sydney Aquarium. Mitchy loves fish and particularly sharks so he loved it. Here are some photos:





Later on Mitchy was just being cute so we took some more photos:



Hopefully the weather will get better, but if not we'll just have to find something else to do indoors.