Geelong Week

Ooh, I'm a bit excited. I am going away all by myself for a sailing regatta for four whole days!! The regatta is the biggest in Australia and is a great place to be over Australia Day weekend. I haven't been since before Spencer days - so long ago now!!
Ky and Spencer aren't coming at all - so this will be the longest i've been away from Spence and one of the longest away from Ky.

Here's a picture of the boat I used to sail on - just to inspire you! This picture was taken at the start of the Melbourne to Hobart Race in 2005 - I'm the one in the....ahh, doesn't matter!

Now it really is the night before Christmas!!

Gosh, I can't believe it's Christmas tomorrow! Time has really flown by! I have been flat chat working, we've been away to Queensland for two weeks then down to Waratah Bay for a week, life has been hectic and great!

Spence is going great guns! His speech gets better every day, he has new words and strings together sentences, it's amazing to watch! I don't think we'd be able to count his vocabulary even if we tried now, he has just picked up so much over the last two months. And he says and does such funny little things, it's quite amusing.

We are having a big Christmas at our house tomorrow with family. We're so excited, our xmas tree is nearly covered up by the presents stacked around it!!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Here's a few pics of pits and pieces:

Little vegie gardens when I first planted them





And what they look like now!! Plus the big vegie garden I'm making:








This is the toybox that I made for Spence:



Ky and Spence - we went for a picnic to Tarago Reservoir the other week:





Here's our stacked up Christmas tree!



Macadamia nut parfait at The Big Pineapple in Nambour!



Spence loved swimming everyday up in Caloundra



Port Welshpool

We're here!

Yes, we're here! In the country!! We're loving it!

It's so great to have so much space around us, space for Spencer to run around and play outside. We even have room to kick the footy in the backyard, how cool is that?
We've met a few of the neighbours and they've all been really nice. I've been out walking a few times, discovering places to go with Spence in the pram. - we even pass cows, horses and sheep along the path! Speaking of animals, Spencer has just suddenly learnt a heap of animal names and noises! Just one day all of a sudden - we suspect they might have worked on animal names and noises at daycare or something because although we've been saying them alot, he just got it one day out of the blue! It's really cute, you say 'What does the cow say?' and he gives a funny little shy look and says 'Moo moo'. His 'oink oink' is really cute! I'll have to try to get some on video - but he goes shy when the camera goes on!

Someone told us that a child of 2 should have a vocabulary of about 50 words, so even though Spence is only 19 months, Ky and I wrote down all the words we think he knows (without prompting or just copying) to see how close he would be to 50, so here's our list in no particular order(I'm sure we've missed a few):

Hot
Gate
Chook
Up
Crash
Bird
Ball
Spoon
Bibby (Bib)
Heart
Flower
Daisy
Pakka (Makka Pakka - children's show character)
Ta
Uh-oh
Ugg boot
Sock
Shoe
Eye
Nose
Nana
Mummy
No
Book
Bikkie (as in biscuit)
Apple
Bee
Car
Bike
Door
Drink
See ya
Bye
Hi
More
Baa
Moo
Neigh
Woof
Oink
Sheep
Fish
Kitty
Puppy
Horse
Cow
Pig
Broken
Pea
Pee Pee

And wouldn't you know it - 50 words! He's a genius!

Twas the night before christmas.....

That's what it feels like! We are moving house tomorrow and it feels like the night before christmas, you know when you have a million things to do and you know that the next day is going to be long and exhausting and hard work, but you're really excited??! That's where we are at right now!

Spencer is at his nana's house for tonight and tomorrow night so we can do lots of work. We have picked up the keys to the house, taken two car loads up, met the neighbours - all this whilst I've had two teleconferences, written a meeting agenda for work, reviewed software issues, written meeting minutes up, organised the boat crew for tomorrow night's training (will talk about that one in a minute!), eaten lots of junk food and finished packing at our current house as well!!

So the boat thing - well, very excited to be making my big sailing 'come back' - doing the women's series racing over the next six months on a lovely big boat. I am the 'crew manager' which turns out to be quite a job! I'll post some pictures of the boat when i get some.

Just an update on Spencer's modelling career - he was due to be on the front cover of a government organisation's annual report - well, he was bumped!! And you know why?? Get this - he was 'not ethnic enough'!!!??? There's a bit of reverse racism for you! So poor old Spence, looks like he'll just have to get an education and a real job like the rest of us!

Anyway, busy busy, better get back to packing now!

10 days to go!

Yep, just 10 days until the big move (and only 8 until settlement!).
We've done quite a bit of packing now and just waiting for the big day! Very exciting stuff!

On the home front, Spencer is doing great...as you can see from his funny picture! I've just had a birthday, so we had 'birthday weekend' (I like to devote a full weekend to birthdays, a day just isn't enough). Had a great weekend, we went and kicked the footy, threw the softball, went to a friend's place for dinner, went to Gold Class movies (gotta love Gold Class!). Spencer stayed at Nana's house for the weekend. It was great! So now I'm another year older! Life is good!

Gosh, it's been ages!

Yes, sorry for that interlude in transmission.....just so much happening...where to start:
1. We're moving to the country - yes, we've bought a new house in 'the country', a little town with a population of only 500 in Gippsland, Victoria. It's pretty close to a much bigger town and only an hour and a half from Melbourne, so it's not too drastic. We're really excited, we have half an acre with a nice house on it. It backs onto someone elses farm so we get to see the cows and stuff and feel like we live on a farm, without having to do all the hard work associated!

2. We've started a business - just a little one and we're just going slowly doing all the setup required. It's a website development business.

3. Spencer is lovely! He's almost 18 months old and saying some words, like Mummy, More, Up, Pakka (Makka Pakka - a character from a children's show), Car-Car, Bikky, Nanna, Fish (he says Shish), Duck, Turtle (he says Ter-Ter), Crocodile (he says Croca), Drink (he says dink), cheese...and some more that i can't think of right now! He also babbles alot and has quite detailed conversations that we can't really understand!

4. Spencer is going to be on the front page of a magazine...well, ok, it's not really a magazine as such, but the annual report of a government department! A friend works at the Office of the Child Safety Commissioner in the Victorian Government and she saw a pic of Spence and asked if they could use it on their front cover, so of course we said yes!

5. We are going to be on television! After me giving a very successful presentation at a Property investment seminar recently we have received alot of positive feedback and somehow this went back to a property investment celebrity who hosts a show on foxtel. She is going to interview us for the show next week!

Gosh, well that's lots of news for now!

Winter colds

I think he's got another one...damn. Woke up coughing and sneezing and with lots of snot today. I was kinda hoping three in a row would do, but nope...another one.
Other than that, he's going great. Running around, playing with stuff, saying words, reading lots of books. Books would definitely be his favorite thing to play with.
He's such a lovely little thing!

I do wish, however, that he'd just sort the sleeping at night thing out a bit better. He seems to be crying often these days at night. He'll wake up about 10 or 11 pm and often cry for ages, we go into his room and pat him a bit every ten minutes or so for an hour and a half and often that doesn't work and we give in a give him a bottle - the only thing that seems to get him back to sleep. It's a tiring business and I'd kinda hoped he would have it sorted by this age, but it appears to be usual after speaking to others in my mothers group. So, spending a lot of nights frustrated and tired.

Kylie gave him a haircut the other night. His beautiful long girly locks are gone! He did look a little like Mr Spock at first, but we're getting used to it now!

Count your blessings

A work colleague of mine lost his little boy on the weekend. He stopped breathing and although he was resuscitated, he had been down too long and his 'life support' was stopped.

His son was just a few months older than Spencer and although he had been sick over the past few months and undergone a major operation, he had returned home and was on the mend. Then...bam...he's gone.

I don't know how anyone can manage to cope, to go on with life after losing a child. I am just so so sad to think of my poor friend and his wife and it brings tears to my eyes to just think about it. I cannot imagine the pain they must be feeling and I just hope that they can manage to keep going.

Count your blessings, because you just never know.....

Jack of all trades..master of none...well, one.....

Today was the exam for my final subject of my masters. Hoorah!!!
Such a good feeling to have no study to worry about...ever....well, until I decide to study something else! Apparently now, I am a Master of IT!! Ha!
I am looking forward to doing whatever I feel like on my days off now.

On the little boy front, he's sick again. Bloody day care. It seems he just alternates every two weeks between being well and being sick. He's got a really nasty cough and hasn't been sleeping well with it, so we're all feeling it in some way. He's still trying to be his lovely little self even through the sickness, he's been dancing away to the iggle piggle song and loving it! He's just so cute!

Moving to the country....gonna eat a lot of peaches.....

Yes, a great lyric from the Presidents of the United States of America...whatever happened to them.....

Somewhat relevant to us at the moment as we are contemplating a move to the country. We are looking for somewhere that is close enough so that Ky can commute to work in Metropolitan Melbourne, but far enough that it can be called 'the country'!

We would like Spence to grow up in the country, especially with the increase in violence and crime that seems to be occurring all around the country in our major cities. The number of stabbings and bashings we hear about on the news now is frightening and the amount of ridiculous alcohol fuelled violence that goes on at night is terrible. I don't know what has happened to our society but it seems that people just lack basic respect for each other. And unless you can afford to buy a home in a more affluent, less 'rough' suburb, then you're stuck in the burbs with the riff raff! Like us!!

So...we are contemplating a move and just waiting till my uni finishes next week to do some real research and visit a few propective places...

On the Spence front...he's going great, walking around, babbling to himself, saying his few recognizable words, being generally very cute! He's almost 15 months now, wow!