Going to work

Mitch is still sick, but he's battling through. He has a runny nose and a nasty cough, but he still manages to say goodbye to Daddy in the morning with a big smile on his face.

Uncle Mike's Birthday

Uncle Mike had his birthday on the weekend so it was another chance for Mitch to play with cousin Lilly.


Mitch also got spend a bit of time with Grandad.
"I don't know what I feel like eating Grandad"

"Perhaps a cheese stick"


In other news Mitch has learnt to point which very cute, unfortunately it means pointing in people's eyes and noses which isn't so much fun. We have borrowed a walker from Aly and James which Mitch has been having fun with. He doesn't quite have control of it though, so he pretty much follows it around in a prolonged almost falling motion. He can't steer it either so goes in a straight line until he hits a wall, then he looks at you expecting you turn it around for him to go somewhere else. It's all very cute!


Unfortunately Mitch has developed a bit of a cold at the moment so he's not a happy little boy. He has the sniffles and a nasty cough. Poor little sausage :(

Busy weekend ...

Mitch and Daddy were at home alone (aside from Nana and Poppy popping in briefly) because Mummy went to a Women's Retreat with our church for the day. We had a fun day of male bonding and playing.
Mitch after his lunch complete with smeared vegemite.

Mitch shortly before going to bed. He had an afternoon sleep so was still full of energy before bedtime. (A prize for someone who can work out what time this photo was taken based on the background - leave your guess in the comments section)


On Sunday we had a Mother's Group picnic down at Bobbin Head. It was a chance for the men to all meet each other and was a lovely day. The children were mostly well behaved, although now that they can all pretty much crawl, even a "play area" of about 8 blankets couldn't hold them. Fortunately there were plenty of adults to keep our eyes on the 8 of them. I don't have any photos of that with me ... maybe later in the week.

New photos

Just a few new photos to look at.

First Mitch and his Nana:


We went to Catriona's 30th on the weekend and there was a little trike there which Mitch liked the look of. First he sized it up and thought, "Yeah I can ride this thing."

"But perhaps with a little help from daddy"


"But this is the best way to travel":


In other news he has grown another tooth so now he has eight. Four at the bottom and four at the top. He's also mastered "ma-ma-ma-ma" and now it's poor daddy who is the forgotten one. Oh well, so long as mummy is happy :)

Going to work in the morning

It's hard to go to work when Mitchy is standing at the window saying goodbye. He is just so cute and watches all the way down the street until he can't see you any more.


In other news Mitch's vocabulary is improving all the time. This morning he definitely said "ma-ma-ma" although again it wasn't really directed anywhere. Meeks is obviously pleased about that after hearing nothing but "da-da-da" for the last couple of weeks. He also likes to say 'ssssssss' and makes this very cute "pop-pop-pop" sound with his lips, like blowing a kiss.

For those of you who like photos we have set up a Flickr site here. It's not so much a newsy site it's just somewhere to put photos I really like of Mitch or anything else that comes up. There's not much on there now, just a couple of older photos, but if I find any other ones that are worthy I'll put them on.

Learning new tricks

Mitch is learning new games all the time. He plays Peek-a-Boo with you by holding up a towel in front of his face and then pulling it down and he loves to knock down towers you build for him like in the pictures below.
First from across the room he sees the tower. It calls to him saying "Knock me down!"

The approach begins!

And after the fall, in the distance a boy crawls away, his work done, leaving boxes strewn in his wake


Sorry about the crappy quality of the photos. I'm a bit frustrated at the moment at the quality of the photos we can produce. The photos from the camera phone and video camera used to be good enough, but I have been wooed by what is possible using one of these or one of these. Oh well, keep dreaming with prices around the $1000 mark! Still it would be nice :) I have been using a new free image processing program which is just super and really powerful. It has most of the capabilities of ones like Photoshop, but it's free. It's called Paint.Net and you can download it from here. It uses Microsoft .Net, so you will need Windows XP (or Vista) and the download is 50Mb if you don't already have .Net installed or 5Mb if you do. It runs on our 6 and a half year old PC (P3 800 with 768Mb RAM), but not very well. Some of the effects are amazing, and you can do a lot to improve photos, although it obviously depends on the quality you start off with.

What else is news? Well Mitchy now has 7 teeth which he uses to eat all sorts of food. His favourite is still yoghurt, but he has added a number of things to his gastronomic repertoire. He has porridge with pureed apple and sultanas for breakfast along with a slice of bread with butter and vegemite. If you help him he eats it, if you don't he picks up the little squares puts them in his mouth, sucks all the vegemite off, and then spits them out. He also quite often has portions of what mummy and daddy have been eating - generally somewhat more chopped of course. He's had a couple of tasty pieces of steak recently, which he enjoyed a great deal. He even had some moussaka!

He now says "dadada", although that is pretty much directed at anything, not me specifically. We think he also said "car" the other day in reference to his "That's not my car" book, but that could have been anything. It's a bit hard to know. Meeks is sad that he still hasn't said "mama", but I'm sure that is just around the corner. He also likes to make a 'ssssss' sound.

He pulls himself up on anything and everything, including the garbage bin and toilet seat, so we have had to move the bin into the cupboard and make sure we keep the bathroom door shut. Some mornings he stands at the front window and bangs on the glass as he watches Daddy walk down the front stairs and go off to work. It's so hard to leave with this little face at the window watching. He furniture surfs around the lounge room and stands happily with one hand casually resting on the couch, but hasn't stood up without touching anything yet. Meeks thinks he'll be walking before he's one, and I guess with the amount of progress he's made in the last two months, he should be able to master walking in the next 2 and a half months before he is one.

He just loves the dishwasher for some bizarre reason. He can be in his room and if you open the dishwasher he hears it and you hear the slap, slap, slap of his little hands as he races down the hallway so he can crawl into the dishwasher. If you let him, he will crawl up onto the door when it is open, and into the dishwasher if you let him, crazy little boy.

He's brought so much joy to us over the past 9 and a half months. It's bizarre to think in a couple of months he will be one!