Baby Hardy is here!

Very happy to announce the early arrival of Roxanne Emerson Hardy.

Born December 11 at 1:24 am. 3.6 kg, 52 cm long.

Just about to spend our first night at home with her. Pictures will soon follow.

(We also have internet at home now! Hooray! Just in time!)

December 16th

Just got an e-mail from the movers and they are scheduled to deliver our things on December 16th - just over two months from when we last saw our things in Davis. They were taken from us on Oct. 10, put on a boat and shipped out on Oct. 31, scheduled to arrive Nov. 25, rescheduled to arrive Dec. 1 and now waiting to go through customs at the Port of Brisbane.

December 16th is also the baby's due date.

We are scheduled for a tour of the hospital birthing ward for the afternoon of December 16th.

I'm guessing a few more things will happen on December 16th, such as:

• Our Internet connection at home will finally get set up
  
• My water will break just as I open the door to greet the movers (just like in the movies!)
  
• The Brisbane Public Transportation workers will strike and it will take Nate an hour and a half to walk to work (and then an hour and a half to walk back after I call him to tell him that my water broke)
• It will be the hottest/most humid day of the spring, until...
• A huge storm will hit, knocking out our electricity and flooding the roadways, making it impossible for our doula to get to us.

That seems to be the ways things are working for us here - everything all at once.

Thanksgiving, wildlife, signs of Christmas and baby update

Thanksgiving feast

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday with Nate's boss (an Aussie), his American wife and their kids. We had turkey, roasted veggies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. We made a rum raisin apple pie. Nate made the crust - we couldn't find vegetable shortening in the supermarket, so we had to make do with a block of lard - and I made the filling and put it all together. It was my first pie with a pastry crust and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Apple pie, ice cream, cheesecake, bottles of wine (emptied by the end of the night).

We are getting used to living in a house without screens and with large gaps between the floorboards and under the doors. We've got geckos living behind the fridge, plenty of bumbling beetles that come in for a visit and end up on their backs, unable to right themselves, and ringtail possums walking across the roof (possums haven't come in yet, but I saw one saunter across the carport roof about three feet from the open kitchen window).

The possums here are much cuter than their American opossum cousin:

(photos from Wikipedia possum page)

I had a big heebie-jeepie encounter the other night. After dinner, I saw a small beast scurry across the kitchen floor and towards the trash can. I figured it was just a (very fast-moving) cockroach. I turned on the light with Nate's cockroach-smashing sandal in hand and this is what I saw:

A lot bigger than it looks.

Yikes! Check out those chelicerae!

We grabbed our copy of the Wildlife of Greater Brisbane (thanks Pete and Penny!) and flipped through to identify this new visitor. It wasn't too hard to find it - it's the first species listed in the spider chapter because it's pretty common in households. It was a Brown huntsman spider. We are a spider-friendly household, so after shining a flashlight and bugging it for a while, we left it alone and minutes later, it scurried out the front door, just as it had entered.

We learned that the bite, although painful, isn't too venomous, but that if you squish it, the explosion could lead to a couple days of blindness. I can't imagine squishing something that size anyway!

Signs of Christmas are everywhere. Santa Claus is featured in every other TV commercial and there are fake trees popping up all over.

Brisbane's Christmas tree

The far more festive Poinciana trees are blooming all over town. I think they fit the season and climate much better than a plastic pine tree.

One of many blooming Poinciana trees in and around Brissie

Baby Update!
We had a ultrasound last week (required by the hospital) and the tech told us that bub is pretty big already - not fat, but with above average sized head and femurs (femora). She estimated that bub weighs about 3.5 kg (the same size as the turkey we ate for Thanksgiving). Bub certainly feels pretty big to me. I've got those long legs firmly planted in my ribs and that above-average head sitting right on my bladder. Really, really looking forward to finally meeting bub!

I'm starting to feel (and look?!) more and more like this:

Brisbane public transportation signage

Pregnant goat from the business end (as drawn by my grandmother)

We met our neighbors yesterday and found out that the mother/wife in the family is a former midwife at the hospital I will be attending. What are the odds?!

Here I am just this morning with two weeks to go:

Thank goodness for big t-shirts. The maternity shirts don't quite cover the belly anymore!

Nate (two weeks to go until daddyhood) showing off his sympathy belly - yeah right!

Qantas 2-for-1 sale!

Extended for just 2 more days! We've put our airfares to Australia & New Zealand on sale in ALL travel cabins: Economy, Premium Economy (where available), Business and First.

This great 2-for-1 offer applies to selected International airfares for travel commencing between 1 February and 30 April 2009. Each passenger pays all applicable taxes.

Hurry, offer must end at 11:59pm Pacific Time (PT) this Wednesday, 19 November 2008!

A sample of the great deals available for selected dates between
16 February and 30 April 2009. Other travel dates available for an additional cost.

	Person 1 (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)	Person 2 (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)	Total for 2 People (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)
Los Angeles to:
Sydney	from $1,838*	from $0*	from $1,838*
Brisbane	from $1,930*	from $0*	from $1,930*
Auckland	from $1,758*	from $0*	from $1,758*
San Francisco to:
Sydney	from $1,838*	from $0*	from $1,838*
Darwin	from $2,262*	from $0*	from $2,262*
New York to:
Sydney	from $2,238*	from $0*	from $2,238*
Perth	from $2,604*	from $0*	from $2,604*
Honolulu to:
Sydney	from $1,658*	from $0*	from $1,658*
Adelaide	from $1,898*	from $0*	from $1,898*

"biggest storm in 20 years" and a new nephew

After suffering through a sweltering morning yesterday (30+ degrees + humidity = hotter than it sounds), a big storm came through late in the afternoon.

We sat under the carport and watched the sky turn dark gray, then watched a fantastic lightning show and listened to the huge thunder claps! Little did we know that as we snuggled under the carport, the suburbs to the west of the city (we're south of the city) were getting totally pummeled!

I heard that 100,000 homes were without power, one man was killed (he was taking pictures of the rain in a storm drain and was caught off-guard (!) by a flash flood), and there were something like 3,000 lightning strikes.

Here's an article about it from the national news. We didn't get any hail and our power didn't go out. As soon as it started raining, the kids next door ran outside and started playing on their big trampoline and their dad started washing his car (he was soaping it up to let Mother Nature rinse it off).

Anyhow, we survived the big storm with our power and our home intact. Unfortunately, Nate's coworker wasn't so lucky - she lives west of the city and has lots of downed trees and her home is still without power.

In other big news... on Thursday, my brother and sister-in-law welcomed their new son into the world. Ethan William.
Nate thinks he looks like my dad:
I guess I can see the resemblance... :)

long-awaited photos

Alright, so I promised photos weeks (almost) ago. Some photos from the past few weeks...

Ainsley and Nate

Our beetle-loving friend Ainsley has relocated from Berkeley to Canberra. She was in town for a visit to the Queensland Museum and points north, so we met up with her for a night of Mussels from Brussels and Belgian beer. (She broke her foot earlier that week in a bike accident and was a good sport to hobble around the Brisbane CBD in search of a good place to eat.)

Manly's version of Ecto 1

For Halloween, we took the train out to Manly, a seaside town that was holding a Halloween festival (complete with firebreathers and belly dancers). We ate at a yummy fish and chips place (Nate continued on his mission to rid the world of barramundi) and saw countless pint-sized Spidermans (Spidermen?).

Now they tell us! The magpie isn't quite so comical in real life when it's screeching and diving at your head.

Photos of our apartment!

The front door. Our apartment is 1/3 of a converted Queenslander house, so the entrance is at the back of the property. Up the steps, not through the wooden gate. It's a highset house, so it's supposed to keep cool in summer. We'll just see about that...
The kitchen
The lounge (taken from the kitchen). Yes, the fridge is in the lounge. Not much room in the kitchen for it!
The bathroom (mermaid shower curtain purchased on sale at Target.) just off from the lounge. It has a funny galley door that slides open.
Guest bedroom/office and adjoining sunroom. It's full of packaging material at the moment. Nothing else to put in there until our things arrive!
Our bedroom with the crib sort of set up.Sunroom that adjoins our bedroom with fan and diaper changing area (let's hope this kid doesn't arrive too soon - we're not quite ready).
Our neighborhood
Me, with 4 1/2 weeks to go until the due date. Black is slimming, no? (Sorry for the half-smile. I was half asleep.)
The belly (and chest!) from my point of view. No feet in sight.

We're getting settled in the apartment, still getting used to the neighborhood and the quirks that come with living in a converted house. Nate's got a tough commute until his bike arrives with the rest of our things (about an hour if he times it right with the bus) and the futon we're sleeping on isn't quite as comfortable as our dear mattress.

Things are scheduled to arrive on November 25, with a couple of days or weeks to get through customs. Anyone want to start wagering on which arrives first? Baby or our stuff? Just our luck, they'll show up on the same day.

So we have a permanent address. If you want it, just e-mail me or Nate. We don't have internet set up yet, so I'm still trekking to the State Library to use their free wireless.

all moved in

Sorry for the delay. Last week was so busy getting everything all set up. Nate's got the camera today, so I can't upload any pictures - you'll just have to wait a bit longer to see where we will call home for the next 12 months.

Settling into our apartment is such a great feeling. Nate cooked our first real meal last night and it's so nice to feel settled someplace. Setting up the apartment with furniture and other necessities is difficult without a car. I can only carry so much by myself with my big preggo belly on the bus, so having Nate accompany me on shopping trips this weekend really helped. Most shops close around 5:30 or so, so shopping after he got home from work wasn't an option.

Our Internet at home isn't set up yet (should be a couple more weeks), so I'm still going to the State Library of Queensland to do most of my computing. Most of the people using the internet here are foreigners - the outlets are overloaded with plug adapters!

Baby Update. Just about five weeks to go. My belly's getting so big and I'm feeling quite exhausted! Baby's kicking and moving and hiccuping a lot, but "bub's head is down" (according to my midwife) and everything seems to be going smoothly. Haven't gotten much sleep since we arrived a month ago and I guess I can count on not getting any sleep for the next few months (years?) or so, right?