Two and a half weeks later

The river has receded, we reentered our house two days after it went under water. Almost everything was damaged by the water and covered in sewage-y mud.

I started some of the photos I took of our destroyed things, but it was making me too sad. If you want to see for yourself, they're online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunmaid/

The big news is that we're heading back to the great US of A! We decided that if we have to make a fresh start somewhere, why not do it back where we want to live anyway. The decision was not an easy one to make; I'm quite sad about leaving all of my friends and the life we've made for ourselves here.

For the time being, we're living with a friend of mine. She and her husband have a two-story, five bedroom house. The four of us are in one bedroom and we have a little lounge area to ourselves. It's a full house, though. It's the four of us, my pregnant mate and her husband, their toddler, two Chinese exchange students, two beagles and a cat. 

We will be here for 6 weeks (2 weeks down) and so far it's been peachy. Roxy and their daughter Layla get on great, it's fun to live with beagles and we have big family dinners. We're not getting too much sleep at night, but at least we've got beds to sleep in.

The kiddies and I are flying out March 2nd. Nate is sticking around to go on one last collecting trip to Far North Queensland and flies home March 23rd or so. My sister is flying out to help me move all of our stuff and help with the kids on the flight. 

We'll be with my parents in Kingsburg until Nate returns and then we're moving to Albuquerque. Our friends Gavin and Kim are moving there this weekend so Gavin can start a postdoc. Nate will be in the same lab working on manuscripts and looking for jobs until, well, until something comes up, I guess.

Let's finish up with something positive. Here's Murdoch doing his best 747 impression:

He rolls over as soon as he gets put down on his back and starts doing this. 

Here's a short video of Roxy's Australian accent. This is pretty much the only thing that comes out of her mouth these days.

2 Years

Roxy turned two this weekend! We had her birthday celebration all planned out. What we didn't count on was Roxy waking up with a fever:

Cuddles with Mama after lots of cuddles with Papa. 

She perked up and we continued on with our big celebration! First stop: Boost smoothie shop for a Strawberry Swirl Smoothie in a Supergirl cup:

Look at the focus.

Next stop: South Bank for playing in the water features. Doc and I hung out on the sidelines while she and Nate splashed around in the water for an hour. She did lots of JUMPING and SPLASHING with all of the other kids.

 The view from the sidelines.

She did not want to leave.

After a long nap in her air-conditioned bedroom (we cranked it on for the first time this year), we enjoyed the afternoon thunderstorms and Nate made spaghetti with olives for dinner. It was too hot to bake pizza. We sang Happy Birthday and she blew out the candles in her bowl of strawberry ice cream.

I know it looks like I'm blowing out the candles, but really she did it.

Happy Birthday to our sweet girl! She's getting bigger, smarter, sweeter and funnier every day!  

So sweet

This is a moment that makes my mommy heart swoon:

Roxy tucked a some of her afternoon snack (a pretzel) into Doc's hand while he napped.

What I didn't get a picture of was five minutes later when she was adjusting his blanket so that it covered his sleeping face. Such is the brother-sister relationship.

Ready for summer!

Life is hard.

Sometimes you just have to take a break on the beach.

Ta-da! She's one!

From this:to this:

in just one short year. We're going out tonight for Latin American food to celebrate.

Escape Artist

I was talking to my friend Katie the other day about her cat Brix. Apparently, Brix, an indoor cat, got his first taste of the outdoors a couple of weeks ago and now all he wants is to get outside again.

It made me think of Roxy. She is scooting all over the place these days. I'm afraid my long evening walks get a bit boring for her when she's stuck sitting in the pram for so long. She also doesn't do all that well when I try to browse at the shops. Instead of climbing out, she tries to scoot out of her pram.

While thumbing through some greeting cards, I turned around and saw this:

Lucky for me (and her!), she didn't have all the kinks worked out:

Those pesky feet sure get in the way.

I don't think she appreciated my laughter...or the laughter of a fellow shopper.

She spends some time every day looking longingly through the security gate we've installed on the front door.

"Nobody knows... the trouble I've seen...."

She's got a game plan, though. Sometimes I find the friends that she's sent to get help.

Her most trusted friend, Giraffe Reimsen. She should probably send one of her friends with legs next time.

November 11

This is part of an e-mail about Remembrance Day that I wrote to my uncle, who is a veteran.

"In Australia, November 11 is called Remembrance Day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, everybody in the country observes a moment of silence for those lost in wars, and to honor the veterans of those wars. All of the news anchors, politicians and plenty of everyday folks wear a red poppy on their left lapel (as close to their heart as possible) all day because poppies bloomed on many of the worst WWI battlefields in Europe. Nobody gets a day off from work, and nobody says, 'Happy Remembrance Day.' It's a relatively solemn day and wreaths of poppies are placed at memorials and veterans gather to remember their fallen mates."

In other news...

Roxanne turned 11 months old on November 11. There's an old wives' tale that babies get cranky and grizzly right before a big developmental milestone. Well, she cranked to no end on Saturday and Monday and then all of the sudden, she started scooting deliberately all around the place.

Crankenstein Lives!!!

I shot the following video earlier today. She thinks it's a lot of fun to scoot into the bathroom and then scoot away as fast as she can when I try to get her. Sometimes she gets so excited that she just turns around in a circle before she figures which direction she wants to go. Tonight before her bath, she scooted as fast as she could to the edge of the tub and pulled herself up! Uh oh. We're installing the baby gate this weekend and keeping the bathroom door closed from now on.

[This video doesn't seem to work on Safari - anyone else having that problem? It plays in Firefox just fine.]

Happy Halloween!

Skeleton Baby dances with ghosts!

Halloween isn't really a big deal here, but we were invited to a Halloween Party by Nate's Aussie boss and his American wife. It was a party for kids, so there were about a dozen little specters running around. Most of the little girls were dressed as witches (although there was a notable SuperGirl-Who-Flew-Into-A-Building) and the boys were dressed in whatever costume would allow them to carry the biggest toy weapon, i.e. machete, sword, AK-47. It was pretty much like Halloween party in America.

Coven leader Jade making a deal with Skeleton Baby

We had hotdogs and hamburgers and ate cupcakes adorned with imported candy corn and candy pumpkins. Just to remind us that we are in Australia, someone brought over pavlovas adorned with chocolate spiderwebs. Pavlovas are an extremely popular dessert here. I love them; Nate feels just the opposite.

Spooky!

What we've been up to...

I know it's been a while since the last meaningful update. Sorry! We've been busy around these parts. In reverse chronological order:

• Five days ago. We celebrated our one year anniversary in Australia.
• Six day ago. Nate's cousin Ashley dropped in for a visit. She's traveling through Australia and stopped in on us for an extra long weekend.
• Nine days ago. Roxy turned 10 months old!!
• Twenty-six days ago. Roxy and I traveled to California for a visit with friends and family. The wedding of my college roommate Sibila was the impetus for the visit.
• Thirty-three days ago. We all traveled to the Northern Territory to explore Kakadu National Park with some entomologist friends.

I don't know how much of that I will get through in this post, so I will start with the easiest.

Roxy turned 10 months old

She's not crawling officially yet, but she gets around. In this photo, she's wedged herself underneath the sofa and she's not very happy about it. She gets herself 'stuck' somewhere once or twice a day.

"Put down the camera and help me!"

Ai yai yai! I only made it through one bullet point. Good thing it was a cute one. More to come.

Becky's Week

After Eliza and Andrew left, we had a full week of Becky ahead of us. Because she had just spent the week driving along the coast of Queensland, she was perfectly happy to hang out around the apartment while Roxy napped. We didn't spend every day at home, though.

We drove down to visit the Daisy Hill Koala Centre and Conservation Park. I went there with Eliza and Andrew and loved it, so I took Becky there. We also wanted to spot a koala in the wild and figured it was a pretty good place to do it. It's over 400 hectares of eucaplyt bushland just south of Brisbane. The Koala Centre is one of the best free educational nature centres I've seen, and I've seen a lot in my time. We've been back a couple of times since Becky went home and I will take all of our future guests there.

Mama wallaby and her joey in the picnic area.

We struck out on seeing koalas in the bush and settled to gawk at the guys living in the educational center.

It's true! There are eucalyptus trees in Australia!

That night we took the train into town for a tour of the Castlemaine-Perkins Brewery, better known as the XXXX (Four X) Brewery. I've toured a couple of breweries and my sister has toured a few. Nate's never been on a brewery tour, and we all agreed that the Four X brewery tour is extremely bizarre. You start off in a weird room with televisions all around, and then you're ushered into a theatre in the round where illuminated statues tell the history of the brewery. Then it gets weirder... we weren't allowed to take pictures, but trust me. It was weird.

The joke is that it's called XXXX because the Queensland rubes didn't know how to spell beer. Har har.

XXXX...X

Each tour participant is entitled to four beers in the alehouse after the tour. I wasn't drinking as much as my compadres and the BBQ dinner included in our ticket was shamefully meager, so we didn't drink all 12 schooners. I think we maybe only drank 10.

The next day, Becky and I struck out for North Stradbroke Island. When I was there about three weeks earlier with Eliza and Andrew, we had a mediocre whale watching experience. This time, the waters were thick with whales! The guidebook didn't lie when it told us that Straddie is one of the best land-based whale watching sites around.

That's the splash from a breeching whale. We couldn't look out to sea without seeing a breech or tail slap or whitewater. It was awesome!

There were also plenty of body surfing dolphins.

Waiting for the waves.

We were also surprised by a big kangaroo who hopped across our path and through the playground. He gave both of us quite a start - we whipped out our cameras just in time to snap a few photos.

Well, here's something you don't see every day.

Beautiful blue waters of Straddie behind beautiful blue-eyed Becky.

The next day, we headed out to D'Aguilar National Park. We got a late start to the day (Roxy decided to take an epic nap), so we didn't get to do a lot of exploring. It was kind of a disappointment, but there are lots of other trails to investigate and we shall have to explore it further before writing it off.

The next two days were the weekend, so with Nate joining us, we decided to head south and explore more of the Gold Coast Hinterland. We had already visiting this beautiful area for my birthday back in May, so we picked a couple of different spots for day trips.

On Saturday, we stopped first at the Brisbane Markets on our way out of town to check out the produce. It wasn't nearly as good as the Cairns Market, but there were plenty of stalls full of cheap, fresh produce and we will be making it a regular weekend trip.

Aussie-grown produce. Yum!

We continued south toward Tamborine Mountain. The guidebook describes it as, "A mountaintop rainforest community." Tamborine Mountain National Park is split up into 13 sections of land scattered around the community.

Roxy telling Nate what she thinks of the new baby backpack. In case you can't tell, she wasn't a fan.

Bek and me overlooking Witches' Falls

After Witches' Falls, we visited another section of the park. Nate and Becky went hiking while I stayed behind to feed Roxy. We sat in a little picnic area with a great view of the Gold Coast. It wasn't too long before we started being circled by a brush turkey. With each circle, he got a little bit closer. It wasn't until he got a little too close for comfort that I shooshed him away and discovered that he had only one eye! It didn't win him any sympathy points - we kept our rice cakes to ourselves.

Clockwise stalking.

On Sunday, we struck out again for more of the Gold Coast hinterland. This time we went to Springbrook National Park. It's about 3500 hectares of subtropical warm and cool rainforest and eucalypt forest. Our first stop the Natural Bridge section of the park. We had a lovely picnic and hiked to a cave full of glow-worms. Too bad for us - the glow worms are best seen at night and we were there around noon. The waterfall and cave was very cool, even without the glow worms.

This used to be a swimming hole and is now fenced off. It would have been an awesome swimming hole!

"See...here's where the glow-worms are supposed to be..."

Family portrait. We reverted to the front carrier for the day to appease the bubba. She seems much happier.

Lovely Springbrook Plateau. The scenery as we drove around the park.

Before heading home, we drove up to the Best of All Lookout. The trail to the lookout goes past a stand of Nothofagus trees, so, of course, Nate stopped to have a look for some scale insects. He found some at the lookout and spent most of his time there looking closely at the leaves instead of admiring the view.

New South Wales just over that ridge.

Nate's insects in the galls on the leaves!

After an exciting weekend, Becky had just one more day in Australia. I had a mummy group meeting that morning, so I dropped Becky off at a nearby park to do some bushwalking while Roxy played with her friends. The park surrounds Mt. Gravatt, a hill that the aboriginal people called kaggur-mabul, or 'place of the echidna,' or 'the echidna rests here.' The echidnas must not have gotten the message, because she didn't see any.

It was the first day of a mini heatwave in Southeast Queensland, so we decided to beat the heat by taking a ferry ride up and down the river. We got back to our stop just as the sun was setting. It was a lovely end to the day and her visit.

Now, it's time that I address a picture of Becky making its rounds on the Internet. Lindsay snapped it when we were on the boat on the Reef:

Yes, Becky is changing Roxy's diaper. Everybody knows that Becky Does Not Change Diapers. Everybody also knows that Roxy Fills Her Diaper When Becky is Nearby. I started to change the stinky nappy, but had to abandon the task to throw up overboard. Becky stepped in like a champion and finished up the job. I know that this will never, ever happen again, so it's going on the front page of the baby book.

Nine months in, nine months out.

Our bubba turned nine months old today. She continues to be a delight to us. She's a mellow girl who loves nappy-free time, splashing in the bathtub and visiting the neighborhood kitties. She eats everything we have given her except goat cheese.

She's not quite crawling yet, but she rolls like a champ. She started aggressively rolling the day after we fed her salmon dinner and Nate is convinced it accelerated her development.

She loves to go for rides in her pram accompanied by her favorite friends. On her lap is Freddy the Firefly, next to him is Rainbow Chain and hanging from the canopy is her betrothed, an octopus we named Prince Roxopus II (we got him around the same time Michael Jackson died). This is how she ends up at the end of a long pram ride.

Although she's on the petite side, she has outgrown a lot of clothes. I packed away her winter clothes and got out her summer duds, including the cute summer dresses we bought or were given when we were home in June. I got a bit sentimental packing up clothes that she'll never wear again, but recovered when I realized she's got a dresser full of brand new clothes.

She gets a lot of comments on her hair, which continues to grow and never fell out, as a lot of (jealous) people told me would happen. We had a little heat wave a few weeks ago and I was tempted to cut off the hair in the back because she woke up from her naps with her neck drenched in sweat. Neither Nate nor I are quite ready to cut her hair, though... she'll just have to suffer a little bit. Maybe we'll get her cornrows for the summer.

Although she's a delight and generally mellow, she is also learning how to communicate in ways other than crying. She lifts her arms up when she wants a cuddle. She flings herself and wails when a toy is taken away or she's not allowed to pull off Nate's glasses. She screeches and splashes in the bathtub. My favorite is that she laughs when she sees something funny. She used to only laugh when she was tickled or swung around. Now I just make a funny face and she cracks up! It's great! (The photo above was taken by Becky.)

We're looking forward to our next season here in Brissie. Spring is upon us (along with some serious hay fever on my part) and we celebrate our One Year in Australia anniversary next month.


Still to come... Becky's week with us. It will be up within the week!