Mitchy had a bit of a sleep in (any time after 7am is a sleep in!) and then opened his present.
Then he proceeded to push it around with a big smile on his face.
Later on in the day we went to our favourite park at Waroongah and had a bit of a play
This time a year ago Mitch had just been born. Meeks was still groggy and feeling sick after the anaesthetic and would be sore for the next few days. Mitch was a beautiful, chunky little boy with big cheeks and dark hair. He was born a month early so was always sleepy and had trouble feeding. In short he was an amazing blessing from God.
The past year has been wonderful seeing him grow, watching as he learned to interact with the world and seeing his personality develop. The next year is going to be just as wonderful I'm sure, as he reaches so many more milestones.
Don't worry there will be pictures coming as soon as I get around to it!
Mitch had his 1 year immunisation needles this morning, poor little boy. He had three needles for various things including meningococcal which is a new one. It's nice to know that he wont ever get at least that strain of it now. He had two needles in one leg and one in the other. He was very brave and only cried a little bit while he was actually being injected. By the time we had left the doctor's office he had stopped crying, what a good boy! Hopefully, his legs wont hurt to much tomorrow on his birthday. I have the day off and it it's fine we're going to go to our favourite park.
The doctor also confirmed that he appears to have a skin allergy to vegemite which is not very Australian, but of all the things to be allergic to, vegemite is probably fairly easy to avoid. You don't accidentally put vegemite in something. Also, all that happens is that he gets a skin rash, so it wont mean racing off to the hospital or Epipens or anything like that.
In other news yesterday he drank his water through a straw for the first time yesterday. Funny how the most menial of tasks can be seen as a milestone!
I've always wanted to take some pictures of Mitchy on his swing but have lacked the technology to capture those action shots satisfactorily. He loves being on his swing out on the back deck. The ability to increase the ISO and therefore being able to increase the shutter speed means you can take great action shots. For those who care these were taken at 400 ASA and a shutter speed of 1/750 sec, for everyone else here are a couple of photos!
And finally, one other cute one. How could you refuse anything to this little one?
I got a chance to play with the new toy over the weekend and take a few pictures of Mitch. It's hard to believe he's almost a one year old. This time last year Meeks was in hospital with high blood pressure, obstetric cholestasis and with her diabetes almost uncontrollable. Back then we certainly didn't know what joy the next year would bring us.
Anyway, here's a few photos taken using the new camera. They are taken on the play gym in the park next door in some afternoon sunlight.
Also Auntie Krissy and Glen came and had breakfast with us on Sunday before Glen returns to the UK. Auntie Krissy will be going to live with Glen in the UK in June so Mitch will miss her.
I'm enjoying playing with the new camera. I have a long way to go in understanding all it's capabilities, but it will be fun to find out. It's Mitch's 1st birthday on Thursday and I have the day off work so hopefully it will be a lovely day and we have lots of fun. Meeks and I went shopping yesterday and bought him his birthday present. Hopefully he likes it! His party is next Saturday. We hope it will be a nice day so we can have it in the park next door. At the moment they are forecasting rain, but 7 day weather forecasts aren't known for their accuracy! Anyway, it will be a chance to get lots of nice photos and have some fun.
Due to a price reduction ($100 off at Ted's Cameras) and a few other factors we were finally able to get the new camera we were hoping for. It is a Pentax K100D. Here is a link for a review. It's a 6 megapixel Digital SLR (DSLR). 6 megapixel doesn't sound like a lot, but when it's paired with a DSLR the jump in quality from even a 10Mp point and shoot is quite noticeable. 6Mp is enough for A3 sized shots, providing the camera is good enough.
Now the only excuse we have for bad photos is the photographer. There is a bit of a learning curve for getting the most out of it although it does have a very basic automatic everything mode. After that there are a number of picture specific automatic modes (like portrait, landscape, macro, etc) and then you get into the more manual modes. I think initially we care more about the picture quality. It's a pain to take a beautiful picture of Mitch and then realise there is heaps of noise and it's out of focus etc. We'll learn to use and appreciate the more manual modes as we become more familiar with the camera.
The timing is great because it's Mitch's 1st birthday next week!
We've had a very busy weekend visiting Horizon's with the Smart's and having family lunches. We had a lunch today today with Meeks' family and took a few cute photos of Mitch with the his Nana and Poppy and Auntie Krissy.
First with Nana
And with Poppy
And Auntie Krissy and Glen
An just one more because he's such a cutie:
Mitch finally got to meet his Uncle Jamie last night and he got to play with his cousin Lilly again. We had a bit of a family BBQ on Sunday night because Jamie and Phaik are back from the UK. It was a lovely dinner prepared by Mike and Mandy.
What a cutie!
Mitch's hair was getting a bit long and he was beginning to look like a bit of a bogan (apologies to any legitimate bogans reading this blog - it is a term of affection. If you're unfamiliar what a bogan is, check out here or here). Admittedly he was a very cute bogan, but his hair was beginning to look suspiciously like a mullet. Anyway, we decided it was time for a hair cut. Here is the pre-hair cut look (Mitch is modelling his very cute Red Baron sleep-suit). As you can see, the hair is growing over the ears and though you can't see the back, it is quite bushy.
So we went over to the Blairs for dinner and the wonderful Shazzy whipped out the clippers. He wasn't very sure about it at first ...
... but was a very good boy and didn't cry or wriggle or squirm. He had a number 8 on the back and a number 12 on the top. Once Shazzy had done most of the work, Daddy had a go ...
Many thanks to Shaz, she did a great job and our little bogan has been turned back into a little boy! I can highly recommend Hair by Shaz for little ones :)
PS: Mitch had a bit of an allergic reaction to something earlier in the day and he had a bit of irritation and swelling around his lips. That's why he looks a bit like he has had collagen injections in his lips in the photos.
Wednesday was Meeks' Birthday. It was Meeks' first birthday as a mummy. Mitch doesn't get any pocket money yet, so he just gave her the best thing he could think of which was photos of him and lots of cuddles. Meeks opened her presents in bed and we had a reasonably relaxed breakfast before I had to run off to work.
Meeks' mum babysat Mitch in the evening and Meeks and I went out to dinner at a lovely restaurant called Cucina Sevardi in Beecroft. The food was delicious, I highly recommend it for a special occasion.
Overall a very nice day. Happy Birthday Meeks!
I have some pictures of it at home, but not with me. Mitch was reaching into one of his toy boxes and pulled out a toy and then stood unsupported for about 20-30 seconds whilst playing with it. He did it a few times including one time where he pressed few buttons on his toy mobile phone and then sort of put it to his ear like he had seen mummy and daddy doing. It was very cute.
And some photos finally, they're not great quality as they're taken off the video camera and it was kind of dark:
Mitch adopts a nice wide base of support as he plays with his blocks.
So Mitch has passed another milestone. He still can't get up without help from something, but once he is up he can stand for a little while by himself. He'd done it before for a few seconds, but never for this long. What a clever boy!
This comes at the end of a very trying week for Meeks and I. For most of last week Mitch was a real handful. He was waking up crying during the night (at 11pm and 5am which he generally never does) and grizzling a lot and crying when we put him down for sleeps during the day and then he'd only have really short sleeps and generally wasn't a happy little boy. Then on Friday night he slept through the night, and woke up happy on Saturday morning and went down for his sleeps on time and even slept in on Sunday morning and also this morning. It's like he's a different boy! We don't know if he was teething last week (we can't see or feel any new teeth) or if he was going through a growth spurt, but either way he's returned to his normal happy self and we are very relieved!
One of the local Primary Schools had a fete over the weekend so we walked over and decided to have a look. There were lots of rides and kids running everywhere. The high light for Mitch was a little kindi-farm with a few sheep, some goats, a piglet, and some ducks and things. Mitch was very quiet and tentative as you can see from the photos, but he spent a long time looking at all the animals.
Can you believe Mitch is 11 months old today? He is growing up so fast. He'll be a one year old soon. Our lives have changed so much in the last year, but it has been such a joy to have him as part of it.
Now that Mitch is more mobile he needs more room to play. We quite often find him sitting at the back door looking outside or sitting at the front window looking outside. So we have explanded his play area to include the back deck. We would have done it earlier but were worried about him falling down the back stairs.
So after spending Saturday morning cleaning up the back deck including the mess from the accursed date palms (a piece of advice from someone who inherited a lot of them when we moved in - don't plant them. They just drop branches and crap everywhere and attract masses of bees when they are producing dates - and the "fruit" when it ripens falls on the ground and stinks up the place) we went and bought a little fence which is user adjustable to cover the stairs.
So now Mitch has room to crawl around and explore his new environment
Obviously the cover is over the spa and it is locked up!
Mitch went to the creche at church for the first time on Sunday morning. Normally Meeks and I go to the evening service and there is no creche, but this week we had to go to the morning service so took advantage of the creche. It was weird sitting in the service without him and being able to listen to the sermon properly without one of us having to go to the crying room or play room with him. Apparently he was a good boy, but it felt very strange leaving him in the hands of relative (although capable) strangers.
Mitch is thankfully over his cold which is great. After Mitch had it, Meeks got it and then I thought I was getting it. Fortunately it seems to have gone away and we are all mostly healthy again.
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 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 :(
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.
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 :)
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.
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!
It was indeed a very hot weekend in Sydney with the temperature at our place hitting 39 degrees on Sunday. Thank goodness for the pool/spa and air-conditioning. We had a fun weekend, but the heat meant it was mostly indoors. On Saturday morning we did get out and had morning tea with Nana and Mitch was at his cutest. He has just the most beautiful eyes, but then again I'm biased.
After being back at work for a week, I really enjoyed the weekend. Meeks went out with her Mum on Saturday morning so Mitch and I got some father-son play time together. Mitch is now quite happy pulling himself up on things and is beginning to furniture surf. Occassionally he forgets how to sit down and gets stranded on random surfaces. He loves to come up to the couch and say hello when you're sitting on it.
On Saturday night we went to a Global Music thing in Tumbalong Park at Darling Harbour with James and Aly and Maddie and Andrew. It was a little bit chilly so Mitch wore his little hoody and sat and played with the grass. He's so cute in his hoody.
Okay, he's not standing up by himself yet, but yesterday evening after he had been put to bed and was meant to be asleep I walked into his room, because he'd been making "I'm not asleep noises" and found him standing up holding on to the bars of his cot looking at the door. He was so gorgeous, but given he was meant to be asleep I didn't want to make a big fuss and praise him. He did it again a bit later, still not really interested in going to sleep. Oh well, very cute but a little naughty!
We'll as I've been on holidays there has been a lot happening and not a lot of posting so this one will be a big one.
Christmas was fun with numerous family events and lots of cuddles for Mitch. He was a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience. On Christmas morning when surrounded by presents and wrapping paper and ribbons Mitch crawled into the kitchen and down to the back door and started playing with the latch of the door. Perhaps he was just ensuring that the back door was secure so that all his new presents would be safe.
As you can see though, having lots of toys can be a hazard when you get trapped amongst them!
On New Year Eve's Mitch learnt to wave which was extremely cute and then delighted all the women at the New Year's party we went to by waving to them very cutely, which of course resulted in more cuddles.
After New Years we went up to Copacabana for a couple of days to spend with my family. Mitch got to play with his cousin Lilly whom he just loves. Everytime he saw her he would get this huge smile on his face. Here is a picture of Uncle Mike reading Mitch and Lilly a story.
While we were there Mitch and Lilly opened James and Phaik's present from the UK:
Afterwards Mitch played with his new bear and jacket.
Copacabana was the usual festival of food and wine we of course missed James, Phaik and Rob very much, but having James and Phaik's presents for Mitch and Lilly helped to make it feel like they were there. Having Mitch and Lilly there has brought a new dimension to things and they both enjoyed all the attention. Mitch seemed to have a little bond with Grandad happening which was very cute.
Today is Saturday and unfortunately I go back to work on Monday. I have been on holidays since just before Christmas and have loved seeing Mitch growing up and learning new things even in that short period. He is now an accomplished crawler and up at Copa was learning to climb stairs (with a little help from Grannie or Daddy) so that he could keep up with Lilly who is an accomplished stair climber (standing up and holding the railing no less!) and is just starting to take her first steps.
This morning when Mitch woke up he was making his first identifiable "Da-da-da" sounds although they are not directed to any one at this stage.
