Busy, busy (but who isn't?)

It's been pointed out to me that I haven't updated since the beginning of May! Sheesh! Where does the time go?

Ah yes, the time goes to building impenetrable forts!

I guess there's nothing really new or exciting to blog about. Life in Australia is pretty boring these days. The weather has cooled off nicely and we're enjoying bundling up under blankets at night. This is the best time of year to live in Queensland: cool nights and warm days and not too much rain.

Our good Aussie girl wearing her Uggs on a chilly morning. (She's wearing an eyepatch to help get her peepers aligned. No pirate jokes, Aunt Becky!)

We're looking forward to a visit from Nate's dad next week. He will be here for three weeks, with a solo sojourn to Sydney in there somewhere.

Roxy put Grandpa doll into bed for a nap. She's practicing for when he gets here.

That's all for now. This last picture was requested by Katie (about a month ago). Taken tonight of preggo me just days from the six month mark. No endless summer pregnancy this time around!

Now accepting name suggestions! We are at an impasse for a boy name!

Life is hard.

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

Haircut and glasses

Roxy recently acquired her first pair of glasses. We noticed that her eyes didn't look in the same direction all of the time and the glasses should help get them back on track before there's any permanent damage to her vision.

Anyway, the glasses have a strap that goes around her head. One of my friends in mother's group said when she saw her, "Oh Roxy! You look like you should be flying a bi-plane!" They make her eyes look huge and look like goggles.

She's been wearing a barrette in her hair to keep it out of her face for the past nine months or so, but trying to keep the bow on with glasses wrapped around her head is just way too much for mama to deal with, so Rox got her first haircut today.

So cute in the chair! This good behavior lasted about four minutes, which means the cut took about four minutes, 10 seconds.

Nate and I laughed and laughed at this picture. He thinks she looks like Chris Farley. This is the face she makes when someone holds up a camera, which makes me think this is what she thinks we look like when we're smiling for the camera. Thanks Rox.

Glasses off for dinner. Don't want them to get in the way of smearing blueberries all over!

Visit to the Koala Sanctuary

Daddy's away, so I thought we would take a little vacation of our own. I guess technically it was just a day trip (morning only). Anyhow, I took Rox out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. The last time we went there my mom was in town, which was last February!

She really like the birds and she got into a conversation with a sulphur-crested cockatoo. She said, "Bye-bye," and to our surprise, he said it right back to her! So, of course, she said, "Bye-bye," again, and he said it again. They kept on back and forth until we were out of earshot.

This barking owl reminded me of a member of my parents' household.

Mom, Dad, remind you of a certain four-legged black and white feline that sleeps on your piano?

Peering in on the kids during brekky.

"Hmmm...now where is that kangaroo I was just looking...?"

"Oh hello Joey!"

The lounging position of this roo also reminded me of the lounging position of my Uncle Key on the beach:

Before we left, we had to check out their special exhibit: a platypus named Barak.

The best shot I could get in the dark exhibit.

Barak spent most of the time paddling around the surface, but I snapped this when he dived to retrieve some mealworms on the bottom of the aquarium. Playtpuses (platypi?) are amazing animals. He would scoop up some mealworms and then slowly float up while he ate them. When he finished his meal, he swam in a spiral column, rather than straight up, to get back to the surface. Really amazing.

The visit must have really tired her out. She fell asleep almost as soon as I put her in the car and slept the entire ride home, which usually means she doesn't take a nap. Now she's rounding out Hour 2 of a nap!

Takes a lot of energy to keep up with those roos.

Happy Easter

Nate left for Greece late Saturday night and missed the visit from the Easter Bunny (and his chance to act as Daddy Taxman on any goodies left for his daughter).

Mr. Bunny brought Rox a chocolate Humpty Dumpty this year. Crack ol' Humpty open and out spill his guts (M&M's). Here's a pic of her trying to get the carnage started:

She managed to scrape some of the chocolate off before I took it away from her and broke him open to reveal his delicious entrails (and to give her a couple of manageably-sized pieces).

Later that day we went over to Shaun and Ann's for an Easter lunch and egg hunt. They're not big on Easter baskets here, so she filled her paper bag with as many eggs as she (we) could find before the big girls got them all.

Doing her best impersonation of an Easter egg with her stripey pants.

The rest of the day was filled with Wii golf and sneaking strawberry patty cakes. Shaun and Ann (Nate's boss and his wife) and their family are moving back to California next month. Good for them, sad for us to lose our good friends, so we'll try to soak up as much of them as we can before they depart!

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!