learning something new every day

Roxy has gotten pretty mobile these past couple of months. My dad spent a lot of time helping her walk around the house and she took her first big walk from one place to another when we were visiting Nate's folks in Pennsylvania. Walking isn't her preferred method of locomotion. She can sure scoot across the room faster than she can walk, but she's choosing to be upright more and more every day.

She also started climbing things, like the couch (as seen above). She's usually frozen in that position for a few seconds before letting us know that she's stuck, not happy and would appreciate some assistance, please! Nate or I usually give her a little boost and try to show her she needs to put a little more effort into climbing up than just sticking her leg where she wants the rest of her body to go.

Now... the photo that will go in the baby book under the heading "First Encounter with Baby Goat":

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the calf that licked her entire leg in one slurp or the face Roxy made when the piglet snuffled her bum for a good five seconds.  

Anyone still out there?

My new year's resolution to blog more certainly fell through! I have a good excuse, though. We were out of Australia for about a month. I was paranoid that if I blogged about it, some stranger who peeked at our home address and blog address from our Christmas postcard would break in and steal all of our stuff. (I know this is crazy, but I didn't want to risk losing our second hand microwave and IKEA furniture - ha.)

I've also taken on a side job that has taken up a lot of my spare time lately. Working from home with a toddler is an eye-opener. A task that, in the past, would have taken three 8-hour work days took two and half weeks worth of naptimes!  No complaints, though! I love thinking about things that don't involve dirty diapers or nursery rhymes.

Anyhoo, in late January, Nate traveled to Argentina and Chile with our former UCD labmates and some other folks. They went for a week-long conference, but traveled around for a few weeks before the conference began. He was gone for about four weeks. Way back when we first discussed this trip, I decided that Roxy and I would hightail it out of Brisbane for the month (smack dab in the middle of summer) and visit family in California, Pennsylvania and Virginia while he was gone.

All of our trips went well and I'll post about them more later. For now, though, I'll show you why blogging hasn't been top priority since our return to Oz. Roxy and Nate both came down with bad colds that had them out of commission for about a week. This picture pretty much sums up how they were both feeling:

Poor baby!

Things are back on track now that everyone is relatively healthy. Nate's got a lingering cough that he's hoping to ditch before he goes to Greece in about a week and a half, but Rox is back to her old self.

Okay, so we're back in business. Expect more posts soon!

update

We've all been on the road for the past few weeks. Lots of stories and pictures to come, but we're working through jetlag and Nate's on an epic multi-day journey to get back to Brissie.

Visitors from PNG

The day after we got back from NZ, our friends Eddie and Lisa were scheduled to arrive from Papua New Guinea. They were stopping in for a few days on their way to California. Unfortunately, their flight was delayed and they didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon.

I only took two pictures while they were here:

Roxy took pretty quickly to Eddie and Lisa. Eddie tickled her during car rides, gave her an endless supply of grapes and loaded up her toast with more hummus than she's ever had in her whole life! And Rox scooted right onto Lisa's lap about 10 minutes after we got home from the airport...which was adorable.

Our friends let us borrow their big house for the visit so we wouldn't have to tiptoe all around after the baby's 7 pm bedtime. Nate and Eddie went golfing while Lisa, Roxy and I took a trip down to the Daisy Hill Koala Center.

Their visit was too short, but it means so much to us that they would use some of their precious vacation time to stay with us. We miss you guys!! Next time we see you, it will be in PNG!

Eddie and Lisa aren't the only visitors we've had from Papua New Guinea. The day that Eddie and Lisa flew out, I noticed that we had a new bird or two in the neighborhood. Listen, I'm no John Audobon, I only noticed because the bird call was so loud and obnoxious. It wasn't until that evening that I was able to nab a photo of our noisy friend.

Yes, I'm the snooping neighbor with a telephoto lens.

It's a Channel-billed Cuckoo, the world's largest cuckoo. They spend their winters in PNG and breed in Australia. The guidebook describes the call as "Harsh, unmusical ork or frantic ork-ork-ork-ork."

These birds are brood parasites, meaning they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and let those other birds raise the baby cuckoos in addition to their own babies. Some brood parasites actually throw out the eggs of the host bird. These cuckoos just add theirs to the pile.

The trees in our backyard are filled with crows nests, and crows happen to be a common target of the cuckoo. This is how wikipedia describes their behavior:

Pairs also work together in order to aid the laying of eggs in host nests; the male will fly over the nest in order to provoke the nest occupants into a mobbing response, whereupon the female will slip into the nest and lay an egg. Alternatively the pair may work together by attacking an incubating bird, driving it off the nest and allowing the female to lay.

For the past two weeks, I've seen and heard cuckoos orking all over the neighborhood and it's REALLY pissing off the crows. Can't wait to see the cuckoo babies in a few months!

Day 10: Banks Peninsula and home!

Our flight out of Christchurch didn't leave until 4 in the afternoon, so we drove out to the town of Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula for the morning.

Banks Peninsula (Captain Cook thought it was an island when he sailed by)

I shopped unsuccessfully for souvenirs while Nate and Roxy played in the park.

Daddy's Inversion Therapy. It gets the tears out more efficiently than just crying.

Our flight was about 4 hours and every seat was taken. We played Pass the Rox and she did pretty well on the flight. She entertained herself for a while by putting Reimsen the Giraffe on her head over and over again.

Not everyone thought this was as cute as I did.

All in all, it was a great trip! New Zealand is beautiful and not as crowded as we expected. I would say it's probably the least crowded country I've ever visited. If anyone out there is planning a trip to New Zealand's south island, we can tell you some good places to see and places to skip.

Day 9: Tasman Glacier, Lake Tekapo, Peel Forest and Christchurch

The weather was calmer by morning, so we took a hike out to the Tasman Glacier. It's New Zealand's largest glacier and it's receding pretty quickly. Thirty five years ago there was no lake and today the glacier has melted and formed the lake you can see in this photo. They predict the glacier will melt completely within the 20 years. We will just have to come back in 2030 and take another photo.

Where's the glacier?

Icebergs in the lake.

Leaving Mt. Cook National Park. View of Mt. Cook from across Lake Pukaki (I just had to get the name in there one more time).

We had one more night in New Zealand, so we drove north towards Christchurch. We planned to stay the night in Lake Tekapo, but thought better of it once we got into town. It was kind of a dive and the most appealing attraction was the hot springs. It was quite hot that day and neither of us felt like soaking in a hot bath, so we decided to mush on.

Actual color of Lake Tekapo! The color is the result of 'glacial flour,' which is sediment that flows in from the glacial run-off.

Lake Tekapo's tribute to the sheepdogs that helped develop the region.

Mackenzie Country was hot and dry. As soon as we drove over the mountain pass just northeast of Lake Tekapo, it was cold and rainy again. We were trying to make it to Christchurch in time for dinner and to find a room for the night. The country we were driving through was so pretty that we decided to take a detour to Peel Forest to see the big podocarps (trees).

Cuddles at the base of the giant totara. It was 9 m in diameter.

Can you find Roxy in the totara roots?

We made it to Christchurch that night, but had to stop for dinner (pub grub) in a small town on the way. Day 9 was definitely a very long day.

Day 8: Mt. Cook/Aoraki, Kea Point

After a breakfast and awkward conversation with our hosts (the worst part of the B&B experience), we set our sights on Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in Australasia. We were able to see Mt. Cook an hour before we made it to Mt. Cook village. We drove around Lake Pukaki (my favorite lake name), which is a brilliant turquoise color.

We made it to the village by lunchtime and ate in the cafe at The Hermitage, "arguably New Zealand's most famous hotel." (When we told our B&B hosts we were going to Mt. Cook, they asked if we were staying at The Hermitage. Um, no. It's $300/nigh and they don't take credit card points.)

After lunch, we took a quick hike out to Kea Point. The weather was kind of bad (gale force winds with gusts up to 120 km/hour) so the keas must have stayed home because we didn't see a single one.

The beginning of the hike.

Kea-free Kea Point

The wind really made hiking sort of unbearable. It whipped up dust and gravel and was so strong that it stopped us in our tracks a few times. It wasn't showing any signs of letting up, so we called it a day in the park and retired to our caravan park just down the road. We stayed in a dorm room and had the most magnificent view of the mountain.

The view from our room at Glentanner Park. You can't get see that at The Hermitage!

We had some down time before dinner, so Roxy gave Nate a few computer programming lessons:

No Daddy... let me show you how to do it.

We stayed in a simple cabin in Glentanner Park, a caravan park. Caravan parks don't really have an equivalent in the U.S. (correct me if I'm wrong). They're a combination campgroup, RV park, motel and hostel. They have shared cooking facilities, shared bathrooms and sometimes a restaurant. I love caravan parks.

Glentanner sure had a nice spot. It was right on the edge of Lake Pukaki and was pretty spread out.

Campers trampoline-ing with the clouds rolling over Mt. Cook.

The bad weather continued all night. It started raining after dark and I couldn't sleep all night, thinking that a BBQ was going to fly through our glass wall.