Weekend projects.

What's going on these days... well, we've been quite busy with the usual weekend projects. It's 8.30pm on a Monday night and Derrick is currently up in the roof finishing off his weekend task of insulating the roof. We put up with a cold house last winter, but decided we were not going to go through the annoyance again this year. My little weekend project was completed at 4.30pm yesterday afternoon, thanks to the assistance of my Dad. I spent saturday afternoon digging up a corner of the garden to plant a vegie patch. As soon as Dad got a whiff of my efforts he turned up on Sunday with a load of dirt in the ute and thankfully helped me turn my patch of upturned lawn into a garden. So far I've planted various forms of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, red onion, broccolini, rocket and wombok(Chinese cabbage). The only thing left to plant is some rhubarb. Now the survival of the garden is purely based on my ability to keep the dogs at bay.

Maeghan is doing really well. She is getting quite mobile these days and is getting quite good at moving in every direction except forward. She's getting up on all fours, doing 360's on the floor, pushing backwards and getting incredibly frustrated that she just can't get everything that she wants to. The above photo is Maeghan's effort at crawling. The arms and legs are working hard, but she's just not going anywhere.

We had a real mother/daughter moment last friday with both of us at the hairdressers together. Maeghan had her first professional haircut. It was starting to look really scraggley as there were all the really long original bits sticking up all over the place. This was just a tidy up and now it can start to grow a little bit neater. This photo in the bath is pre-haircut.

A weekend in Canberra

Although the Queen's official birthday is actually in April, here in Australia, we
have just celebrated it with a long weekend in June. April is an inconvenient time to have another public holiday. We already have Anzac Day and the Easter holiday's in April. It's an awefully long winter if we don't have at least 1 public holiday. Truth is, no-one really cares the reason behind the holiday, we'll just take what we can get. Regardless of the reason, we decided to pack our bags and spend the weekend down in the Nation's capital, Canberra.

There were a few mandatory places of interest that we needed to visit. Parlament House and the War Memorial were among them. Surprisingly they were both pretty interesting.

There were theories behind how we planned our weekend. We left very early on Saturday morning so that Maeghan would sleep most of the way down there. Naturally she only slept 1/2 an hour of the 3 hour drive. Then we thought we would tuck her up in the pram to have a sleep while we took a tour around. Well, of course she cried and cried until we lifted her out of the pram. She didn't sleep at all on the drive back to Sydney either. Cheeky girl! Luckily she still slept well at night so at least we got a good night's sleep too.

And when Maeghan got bored with sitting in the pram, she hitched a ride up on Derrick's shoulders. The view was much better up there.


















There were a lot of really cool things down at Canberra that I didn't expect to find. The Old Depot Markets were a little bit like Sydney's upmarket Paddington markets, but a lot less crowded and a lot less pretentious. We tried to go to Questacon, which is a really interactive Science musuem, but it was mobbed with kids so we gave it a miss. Instead, we hired some bikes & went on a ride around Lake Burley Griffin. We had so much fun. Maeghan was really good. The bike helmet was too big & kept going down over her eyes & it was late in the day with not much sleep, but we managed to ride for the hour without too much drama.

As you can see from the photos, we're all reasonably rugged up. Canberra is in the depths of winter now & is generally a fair bit cooler than Sydney. Well, when I say that it's in the depths of Winter... obviously not an Irish Winter. The daytime temperature was probably around 13-15 degrees.



Of course, we had to do a drive by of the Embassy of Ireland. It wasn't the most exciting looking Embassy of the lot, but it certainly wasn't the worst. Though when we were driving around & saw some temporary fencing around a building, we expected the worst & thought that would be typical. Luckily it was the construction site next door.

The surprise highlight of the trip was a visit to a place called 'Cockington Green'. It's basically a display of minature villages. It was really well done. There were little scene's set up in each display, each with their own subtle humourous storylines. Football fields with streakers, working class villages in England, with dogs lifting their legs on unsuspecting farmers, sunken boats for sale. It was quite cute. I think when Maeghan is a bit older, Canberra will be a really great place to visit

Anyway, till our next exciting adventure...

PS. Happy Birthday Stephen for the 3rd & Happy Birthday Annette for the 15th June.

The latest news...

I must admit, I'm getting a bit slack with keeping the blog up to date. The weeks are just flying & I can't believe it's June already. Most of our days are fairly routine, it's easier that way. We have a nice little network of Mum's & bub's that we meet up with reasonably regularly. I'm back at work a few days a week now, so I'm going to blame the extra workload for my slackness at keeping the blog up to date.



Maeghan is getting big. I don't mean to repeat myself every blog, but there's a reoccurring theme here. It is inevitable that each week, growth is her biggest achievement. Vocally she's starting to develop a bit more. I'd like to say that she's starting to say 'Mum' now, but I think it's just a bit of a coincidence. She's getting her "mmm's" going and then it's usually followed by a whinge, which sort of sounds like she's saying 'Muuummmm'. I keep trying to teach her to say 'dadadada' when she's whinging and 'mum-mum-mum' when she's happy. It's all quite theoretical though - she's not really saying anything decipherable - it's all just a bit of noise at this stage.

In the photo above, she's enjoying the staple Australian breakfast of choice, Vegemite on toast. This is usually quite messy, but delicious all the same. As much of a pain that it is, I have started to let her have some finger food from time to time. The dogs are very good at coming in and cleaning up the mess afterwards.


She's got the waving thing happening now as well. It's not quite on cue, but in the right mood, she does know what it means when we ask her to wave. We're teaching her some Irish as well. Along with the wave, we've been saying 'Hiya, Hiya'. Maybe that will be her first real words. The actions used for waving also doubles up for splashing in the bath, just a different context.

We had a swimming lesson last week, which she loved, but there was lots of splashing involved there as well. It's pretty cool actually, by the end of the class, Maeghan was happy to do an assisted jump off the side of the pool & dunk her head almost fully under the water. I'll probably try to keep getting to the local pool every few weeks, just to keep the water confidence up so that when summer comes around she's ready to start enjoying our backyard pool again.

There's no crawling yet. Maeghan has just started to move from the sitting position & reach forward to the crawl position, but she's not actually mobile yet. I'm happy with that, at least I don't have to start chasing her around or keep the floors too clean yet.

That's about all the news for this week. We have a long weekend next weekend, so we're going to head down to Canberra for the weekend. I'm sure there'll be some more exciting news to write about then.

Go the Swannies

Last Sunday we took Maeghan along to her first ever Swannies game. AFL and Cricket are the only two common sports that both Derrick and myself both enjoy & the AFL is the only sport that we both support the same team. Usually, it's me cheering on the Aussies & Derrick will go for anyone but Australia. The only exception is when Australia are playing the English in the cricket & then he is stuck because he won't go for either team.

After a fairly average start to the season, the swans have finally had a decent win. Maeghan was more interested in chewing my scarf than what was going on in the game, but I'm sure that if we subject her to enough football in the early years, she'll get into it eventually. She has no choice really.

Daddy's Little Girl

No matter how grizzly the afternoon has been, seems that when Derrick walks in the door home from work, Maeghan turns into a happy giggling little baby. She is physically getting much stronger & loves to be thrown around a little bit, as long as there's an empty tummy, we don't mind either.

New tricks since last time? Ummm... she's really trying to move about now. Maeghan will quite happily throw herself off your lap to reach for something on the floor or the coffee table. Maeghan is just starting to get up on all fours. It's a slightly assisted move, but once there, she's now strong enough to hold the position. Another assisted move is the push along the floor to get something. If I push my hands against the feet, she's now learnt to push back and make a bit of distance.

Maeghan now has two teeth! On the bottom. The first one turned up about 2 weeks ago & the second one came a week later. We had a few rough nights while they were breaking through, but once they were through she was grand.

I'm told by others that Maeghan looks like she has had a growth spurt. Apparently she's really looking older as well. I guess she feels bigger, but I can't tell. I weighed her last week & she was about 9kg, so she's certainly not going hungry.

This sunday is our first Mother's Day. Derrick needed a gentle prod to remind him & then a few not so subtle hints to point him in the right direction for what Maeghan might be able to get me.

By the way, Happy 30th Pamela!!!

ANZAC day weekend

We're now on the other side of the Anzac day long weekend. Every year we have a public holiday to commemorate those that have served for Australia. Since being united with his old Army unit several years ago, Dad has become an active participant in the Vietnam Veterans association and as such had decided this year to march in the Anzac Day Parade.

Dad was very excited. He's a proud veteran & Anzac Day is good opportunity for all the boys to get back together for a chat and a beer after the parade.

Although the weather has been a bit dodgy lately, we all made the trip into the city to cheer on Dad. The parade goes on for hours. I don't think there are any WWI veterans left, but there are still a few WWII diggers around, with plenty of other wars fought between then & now. Although the parade started at 9am, Dad didn't march past until after 12pm. As such, we had to find ways to amuse the kids. With Isaac, this means drip feeding him treats in between chasing him up & down the footpath.














Eventually Dad's Battalion marched past. We all waved our flags, cheered and then high-tailed it to Pitt St for lunch and a spot of shopping. It's not a great photo, but he is tucked in there on the side.


By the way, Happy 14th Birthday Shauna for last week & Martin for the 5th this week.

Pictures for Granny

This is just a really quick post - just thought we'd put a few cute pictures of Maeghan up for her Granny. Now that the weather has cooled down a bit, she's finally been able to wear the cute little green dress that she was given at Christmas.