Old Off-line Post 1

So the internet is down. Our home phone is off, and still I find myself sitting here, writing up blog entries. What a nerd I hear you exclaim! Well, yeah. But it’s been two weeks now and I don’t want to forget all the stuff that Harry has been up to, so I thought I’d write it down here and post it later when I can. You can get the Harriet Retrospective.

Well we met up with the girls from EB the other week down at Kings Park which was fun. Harry is here in the car, ready to take off. You can see in this photo our innovative intravehicular infant entertainment system – a set of links permanently linked to the headrest of the passenger seat. This way she always has something to keep her occupied while she’s in the car. And how she loves those links! They get a chewin’, a fiddlin’, a yellin’ and essentially a whole lot of lovin’. Who ever thought that plastic rings could be so darn exciting?

When we got to the park the other babies were soon alerted to Harriet’s presence by her well-practised roar /yell /squeal of excitement at seeing other little people around her. I think she only made two of the babies cry, so she’s getting better! Poor Elias made the mistake of getting stuck next to Harriet and you can see here that Harry thought his head made a great new toy. *sigh* You just can’t take this girl anywhere.


The other major item on the agenda at our place lately has been the renovations on the house prior to putting it on the market. Harry came out to give us all a supervisory glance the other morning. We had to start work at 7am to avoid the ridiculous heat of the day, so she thought “Why bother with this clothing you speak of?”. Well, it’s a nice thought if you’re in the pram, but not so nice a thought if you’re kneeling down in the dirt. Ewww…. Enough said of that. In this photo she was laughing at Nanna, but Gromit (whose ear can just be glimpsed in the bottom left of the photo) is never far behind for a laugh either.

And who thinks she’s an awesome baby now? A few weeks ago she graduated from the reclined baby seat in the trolley to sitting up big girl style. Wow! I had her in the sling to start off with, but she was squirming around and trying to grab everything off the shelves if she got within eyesight of even the most revolting products (making a grab for the Spam tin does not bode well for this vegetarian household). So into the trolley she went – and she was quite pleased with herself as you can see. And can I just mention that next time you see someone taking a photo of her baby in a trolley, there’s no need to think it’s hilarious and start sniggering/openly mocking her. I mean really people, these things are momentous events that need, nay, MUST be captured for posterity.

Mike and Jan had their friends Marion and Sally over from England for two weeks. And what do the English like to do as soon as they step foot on Australian soil? Burn themselves to a crisp of course. So it was straight off to the beach to meet up with them and for a few oohs and aahhs over the gorgeous Harriet. She went for her first dip in the ocean (that is, a proper swim rather than just dabbling her feet) and loved it. She had a little incident with her long fingernails and forehead from the night before as you can see in the photo. One of the problems with cutting her nails is that she just won’t let me cut them! She starts grabbing for the nail trimmer and screams like a crazy woman if she can’t grasp it straight away. So I get maybe a ten second grace period before I have to relinquish the trimmers to her grubby little hand. In that time I tend to manage a couple of fingernails (I’m getting pretty quick) but there’s no way I can manage the whole hand. So every now and then she has the odd scratch on her face – just adds character I say. A whole lot better than being dropped face first on to an open bar heater when you’re six months old.