First Playgroup!

Today was a beautiful morning, so Harry and I went for a walk up to our local Playgroup. We had to take a piece of fruit so I took a banana (at their current price I thought I'd ingratiate myself with the other parents) and whilst rummaging around in the fridge, realised that Harriet's favourite food is tomato...and sitting in our fridge was a little tub of cherry tomatoes. It can take a while for the good ideas to sink in around here, but when they finally do, boy are they good ones! Here's Harriet enjoying her first baby-sized tomato, she chomped into that thing with gusto.

We got to the Playgroup and first stop was the sandpit. Within five minutes Harriet had thrown sand high up in the air and completely covered herself in sand. Then it was on to the crafts table, where there was a whole pile of playdough fun going on with some older children. Harriet sat up proudly at the table and picked up the playdough...and started to chow down. I gently took it from her and showed her some fun ways of playing with the playdough that didn't involve it coming into contact with her tongue. Put the playdough down...and again, straight into the mouth. Well, what the hell, you're only young once, yeah? So I let her have some playdough but unfortunately it wasn't as tasty as the cherry tomato. As you can see, this was her expression after eating it. And I don't know if it's quite visible in this smaller shot, but if you cick on it you might see the PUDDLE of saliva that started to pour out of her lips, down the chin and all over the shirt. No problem, everyone here has children I thought, they'll all be looking wild and woolly too. Ummm....no. Harriet's new saliva-soaked shirt now became a magnet for soil and sand, so during the next trip to the sandpit the shirt began to look a little worse for wear. I started to become a little self conscious that my baby was the only filthy dirty baby! Did I let it worry me? Not on your life! This was the same seat where, when the food came out, I sat Harriet down. Poor little mite got so excited at seeing another baby next to her that she lurched forward and smashed her forehead on the corner of the table, then fell backwards and bumped her head as she fell to the ground. Not a happy Vegemite. But after some boobie all is always right with the world.
We finally found the baby toy box and in there was an activity board which was great fun for a few minutes. It was so fun in fact that you can see the discarded remnants of cherry tomato #2 on the ground behind it. But the real joy of Playgroup laid in the squillions of toddlers and babies she had to run after, pull at and jump around. And get this - not one baby cried at her and she didn't squeal at ANY babies! (Claire, can you believe it?!).


Oh and this is just a cute photo of Harriet eating sushi that Papa made for us all for lunch. Harry lurves a bit of sushi...and you can see here that it's an attractive look.

New New South Welshman and woman

Well Nana and Grandpa finally made it over East! And although this photo makes it look as though they arrived in a flurry of snow, it's actually just a whole pile of big raindrops. Unfortunately Sydney didn't put on a nice show weather-wise for their arrival on the Indian Pacific, but as you can see, Harriet had no trouble putting on some big smiles for the new arrivals. We all went out for lunch at Wagamama's and dinner at the local Lebanese restaurant and both times Harriet spent more time walking around the restaurant than actually sitting there eating her food!

With the grand parents gone, harriet needed to find something else to occupy her insatiable need for interaction, and what better suspect than poor old long suffering Squeezmo. Here the showdown is getting serious and it even looked for a minute as though Harriet may actually MOVE! But no, shortly after this photo was taken the cat scampered past and in looking back at where he'd taken off to, Harriet's legs went scooting out from under her. It's so frustrating watching her be so close to crawling and walking and doing neither!


It obviously doesn't bother her any though, here she is having fun exploring the lounge room rug. The cats are generally quite pleased with her immobility, although once she has control of Mama and Papa's hands she is an unstoppable moving machine and Squeezmo has found the best place to hide - on top of the table. It only took him about four weeks to work out. Is my cat dumber than my baby? The answer is: yes.
Moving interstate requires the obligatory interactions with administration, and one of those ports of call is the RTA. The inconceivably ridiculous notion of state-based driving licences meant we had to swan around in there for about 45 minutes organising new licences. Harriet kept everyone there entertained - running up to them to say hello, rummaging through my bag, rifling through Papa's wallet and throwing out $50 notes all around her (we had a man come up and tap us on the shoulder to say "Umm, your baby is throwing your money around". Sure enough...). We finally left and then organised Harriet's membership to the Toy Library just accross the road. There she met another little girl who was wearing her kitten top so they got to playing.


And of course to have the perfect end to any day, you have to have...well, the perfect end! And here it is! Good look, huh? I personally also approve of the one sock as well.

She'll Never Walk

Considering how Harriet insists on walking everywhere whilst holding on to our hands at all times now, we thought something that can assist her with the walking might be a godsend for our lower backs, so we purchased her this little pushing toy thing that also converts into a ride-on when she finally gets the hang of this walking gig. Well as you can see Papa showed her how it all works and she was very interested...until she noticed the little toy steering wheel located just below the walking bar.
As soon as she saw this she immediately plonked her little bum on the floor and started playing away with the wheel to her heart's content. Umm, not quite the way we thought she'd play with it!

I was taking a photo of her pressing the buttons when a certain look came over her face...and her eyebrows went pink...and a strange forced smile played across her lips. Hmmm, it's POO TIME! Yep, a charming shot of my little daughter squeezing one out. It's such a sweet life having a baby, all smiles and giggles and POO!

Now that we live (again) just a short walk to Fox Studios through Centennial Park we thought we'd check it out. Harriet actually stayed in her stroller for about twenty minutes before wanting to get out this time, so maybe it's growing on her. Then again, there was a pretty good array of distractions (especially dogs) so I don't think we can take it too seriously.

Once we got to Fox we went inside the coffee shop for a nice warming hot chocolate and a biscuit. Harry thought this place rocked! A coffee table the right height for her to hang on to, pictures on the wall from other children (even another Harriet who had drawn a snake!) and some crumbs from the biscuit to play with. But the whole experience took its toll and she crashed pretty quickly after we finished our drinks. On the way home she actually fell dead asleep in Papa Jimbo's arms which she hasn't done for months and months so that was very cute.

The other method we have up our sleeves for getting Harriet tired when she won't go to sleep is to go for a swim in the local pool. The latest game is to sit her on the side of the pool and say 'Jump!'. She then screws up her little face (you can kind of see her doing it here), clutching one hand to her ample belly and falling into the water. Sometimes she just can't bring herself to make the plunge though, so we hold on to her hands and she kind of pulls herself down, where she does a little baby version of dog paddle to keep herself afloat. She's also very good at holding on to the side of the pool and can almost crawl out. I've just noticed that in this photo half of her butt cheek is sticking out of the lil swimmer nappy - how stylish!

Scotland, Scotland, Scotland. Oi, Oi, Oi!

Again with the love of baby wipes! I tell you, the number of photos we have of this baby ripping up and/or eating baby wipes would rival anyone's. I should just return all of her toys and let her and the box of wipes loose in a room for an hour or so. No more baby wipes, a room that looks like it's experienced an indoor snowstorm and a very ahppy baby would be the result I think!



Jimbo, Harriet and Mama went out to see Paul play at the Darling Harbour Jazz & Blues Festival. Horrible drizzly and cold day (it always is on my birthday...that's the bummer of having a June birthday I suppose) but there was a pretty good turn out for Paul's set which had people tapping toes all around the harbour. Harriet was absolutely fascinated and you can see her fixed gaze here. She also met up with Mark & Mal, Nelson, Nai, Rach, Nola and Anna so a lot of people to play with her which of course Harriet always loves. We went to buy a coffee (*sigh* yes, I'm still on decaf because of the breastfeeding and no, I'm still not used to it) and Harriet found a straw...man, I tell you, a STRAW! What a fantastic, awesome toy. She started sucking the end of it and the paper sheath lasted all of a half second under the melting power of her super-saliva. Here's Mal trying to discuss the finer points of Paul's set with her whilst Harriet stays intent on the straw situation.

Later that afternoon Lisa and Craig caught up with us and we all went out for dinner at this place in The Spot which was quite delicious. Lisa could not believe that Harry ate a whole pile of pickled ginger and we couldn't believe that it was so surprising. I think we forget that Harriet has an abnormally easy temperament and fascination when it comes to food. Afterwards Lisa got a good cuddle on the lounge, Harriet slept and we all tucked into some birthday cakes courtesy of Craig. YUM! And Harriet obliged us all by sleeping soundly.

And in other fashion news, here she is modelling the fine jersey bought for her by her Uncle Dave in Scotland. There are some who are appalled that Harriet's only sports clothing consists of a Scotland jersey, but I think that's plenty considering she can't even walk yet!

Being a Monkey Child

So although she may be a real peach, Harriet is more than capable of raising a few eyebrows when we go out thanks to her high vocal volume. On one such occasion we had innocently thought to ourselves "Hmm, let's go out and enjoy this beautiful morning with a quiet breakfast on the beach down at Bronte". Harriet of course perked up her ears and thought MWAHAHA! We knew things were going to be difficult when, on descent into the hill where the Bronte cafes lie, Harry's squeals started to reach a rather annoying pitch. Thinking that just getting out and into the world may distract her enough to ease the squeals, we popped out of the car, set up her booster seat and ordered food. NO WAY JOSE! Harriet was absolutely determined to make the whole event a trial. *sigh* Sure she looks cute here trying to undo my wallet (which takes her all of about 1 second) but it must have been the only millisecond when she wasn't screaming down the place. Just to compound matters, there was a cafe dog that loved to hang around Harriet, making the squealing issue just that little more difficult to control. The cafe personnel were very happy to see the backs of us.
But then to counter balance that experience here's another of that cheeky monkey grin! Goodness knows what on earth she was actually grinning about, but it was obviously something very funny.

The next best thing to grinning at home is...grinning in the pool of course! Well any water will do, but the pool is especially fun since it's big and we tend to stay there longer than we do in the bath. Harriet here is walking down the ramp into the hydrotherapy pool at Cook & Phillip Park where she has her swimming lessons for now. She gets so excited that we have to try and hold her back from leaping into the water and finding out that she can't swim just yet.

Another look I tend to receive is this one; unfortunately I wasn't close enough to capture it full frame, but I think you can get the gist of it. It's as if to say "What in the world are you DOING?" and also a tad of "I don't really like it either, whatever it is". But you may be able to tell by the background stuff in this shot that we had finally moved into our new house. Yay! Unpacking is proving a new challenge, and what would normally take us about 2-3 days has now stretched out into a couple of weeks, but as of writing this entry we have got everything (mostly) under control. With Harriet around most things stay in a semi-chaotic state.

And finally Harriet doing her favourite thing in the whole world - muck arounds on the bed. She gets thrown in the air, plonked back down with force on to the mattress and rolled all around. She *loves* it. Papa is getting a bit of a face squash here which is just one of the physicla demands of parenthood.

I was just thinking the other night about all of the nicknames Harriet has:
Harry, Hazza, Hazzamaphone, Hazzinator, Squealie, The Squealinator, Trips, Crazy, Crazybaby, Tub o' Guts.
And they do tend to follow the theme of her personality.

Cheeky!

This is one of my favourite photos of Harry, she just looks as cheeky as she really is! She also has this extra cute habit of crossing just her ankles whenever she sits up somewhere. She's just about to do it in this photo...
And is actually doing it in this one. I think she just looks way too old to be only 9mths in these photos! All those teeth, man, it's enough to give a breastfeeding mother a second thought I can tell you now!
One of her favourite toys at the moment is definitely what we affectionately term her 'nipple ball'. It really does have little pseudo-nipples all over it. Yeah sure the shops call it a 'texture' ball and claim it is good for their sense of touch, but really it's just a baby's happiest moment when they grab something that big, round and with THAT MANY nipples on it. You can see by Harriet's expression that she was pretty darn happy about the thing. I think she was thinking "I can breastfeed for the next five years on this thing!". Submit your caption now!
We went down to Clovelly Beach to eat our delicious tofu burgers from Out of the Blue and Harriet had a grand old time grabbing sunglasses off our faces, going for her 'steps', lolling around on the grass and grabbing Jimbo's nose. You can see her lunch in this final photo...yep, that's it, there in her mouth. She likes the tofu burgers almost as much as we do.

Native Americans and another Catch-Up Post

Here's Harriet doing her 'Indian' game - you know, where you put your hand over your mouth and make a 'wooh wooh' sound. Jimbo says we need to call it the Native American game, but that's a bit more difficult to say, so we'll stick with the original for now. You can see she's right into it - as soon as you say 'Indian', the mouth hangs ajar, her eyes light up and it's soon underway. This was taken in the apartment where we were staying when we first got here in Sydney so I'm still quite a bit behind in the posts, sorry about that.

We went out to meet with Auntie Georgia at the park one windy, blustery day and Harry had a ball. Even though she was in a pretty squealy mood, Harriet loved pulling Georgia's mouth open to see what was inside, riding on her knees and generally using her body like it was her private amusement park. There were also a couple of friendly (perhaps overly friendly!) dogs who sniffed around our food and if I remember correctly one of them actually took off with some of it! Harriet of course wanted to rip the hairs from their muzzles with excitement and joy, but they didn't seem too fussed.
Then one afternoon when it was surprisingly fine after a spate of yucky weather, Uncle Jim (moral guardian extraordinaire aka 'the godfather' - no horse heads here though) had a bbq at his place. Harriet loved pulling at his beard, rolling around on his lawn and generally being a cute as hell munchkin rascal. Jim also showed me some video of his nephew who is living over in Paris at the moment and he was ultra cute as well.
One of the other girls there is pregnant so Harriet's presence was a portent of things to come. Although I have to keep reminding myself that Harry is just a little more rambunctious than your average baby. Of course that's what we love about her - you can throw her in the air, hang her upside down, swing her in circles, tickle her until she's begging for mercy or even more than one at the same time and she just craves more, more MORE!

Ummm, and I'm not too sure what she was doing in this photo other than looking:
a.) extremely cute
b.) very pleased with herself
c.) a hell of a lot older than 9mths

Anatomy of a Cafe Visit

First, Harriet is placed in her booster seat. Everything (salt/ pepper, sugar packets, water glasses, etc.) is placed on the farthest side of the table from her grasp. I think in this photo she's reaching for the sugar.


The next stage is a very grumpy baby. There are only the toys we have brought with us from the car and of course none of them cut the mustard when you're out somewhere exciting like a cafe. We have usually ordered and are anxiously awaiting the food.
The food arrives. Huzzah! We carefully slice up the mushrooms/ toast/ tomatoes or whatever it is that Harriet ordered that morning. Blow on them to make sure they're cool and then - destruction! You can see here that the food often finds a rather indirect route towards the mouth.

A lot of food is grappled and wrestled with as though Harry was in the Colosseum.
Phew! End stage finally occurs. The table is cleared, the major hunks of food that have accumulated at the bottom of her seat and under the table are cleared up by us and Harriet is well on her way to falling asleep in the back of the car on the way home.

Splash Splash, Auntie Georgia and Long Hats

One of the first things we made sure we did when we touched down in Sydney was enrol Harriet in swimming lessons. We were lucky enough to arrive just after the start of the semester so Harry was in a Monday 9am class for baby swimmers at Cook & Phillip Park Pool. They were quite reluctant to let her start in the second class but we were adamant that she was fine in the water and could go underwater for an extended period, not just be dunked, so they finally relented (but I think they were still thinking they'd chuck her out of there when we rocked up for the first week).

Of course she just loves it and begs to be thrown underwater and has even started to quell her ongoing fascination with other babies to focus on doing things in the water! This photo was taken when Papa Jimbo was having some fun in the shallow end of the pool on the day we enrolled.


Just after we enrolled Georgia and Nathan were nearby on a rare day off work for Georgia, so we walked down to have a coffee together. Unfortunately the first meeting between Harriet and Georgia doesn't look as happy on film as it actually was in real life, because Harry thought George was just the coolest and in the photo she looks mightily uncertain!

Coffee was lovely and it was great to catch up with Georgia and Nathan but whilst sitting outside the change came in and by the end of it we were racing to the car trying to beat the massive raindrops and dark clouds that were rolling in at a goodly pace.

It was the start of some rather bleak weather generally and later that week when we drove to Bobbin Head to say goodbye to Zara and Adam before they flew out to live in Ireland. The weather was a bummer but at the same time it meant that we had an excuse to put Harriet's cute beanie on her and she didn't mind so much and would let it actually stay on there. Normally it will last about 10 seconds and then she reaches up and whisks that thing off as quickly as she can (this often involves it falling over the front of her face first, covering her eyes, a few little squeals of upset and then one of us will finish the job off for her by grabbing it off her head completely).

There were quite a lot of children around and Harriet enjoyed just people-watching for most of the afternoon. Turns out that Georgia was there trying to find us all but we couldn't see her and all of our mobiles were out of range, so we missed out on catching up again. Zara and Adam were astonished to see that Harriet was actually a little person and that where once there were two - now there were three! I think it is a little harder to come to grips with when you haven't seen someone pregnant and then all of a sudden you just meet up with them and they have a third party who can almost walk and almost talk and is demanding attention. We were very sad to see Zara and Adam head off, especially since we didn't get much of a chance to catch up before they left.

Mirrors, Meetings and Munching

Well we finally touched down in Syd-a-ney and made our way to the serviced apartments where we were staying in Chippendale. Really they were in Redfern but obviously it's a bit of a marketing faux pas to use that in your advertising campaign, so Chippendale it was. The apartment itself was really very nice and having it serviced each day was pretty great too!

It was here that Harriet started to really master this whole walking caper. No longer was walking just something that happened when we dragged her arms a couple of centimetres ahead of her and the feet would reluctantly pick up and follow. Now the walking had progressed to actually wanting to get places! With our hands to hold on to, Harriet had two favourite locations in this place:

1.) The floor-ceiling mirrored built-ins in the bedroom. They housed the magic mirror baby! This awesome baby never cried at Hazza's squeals, was the same height for some good head smacking and loved to smile back at a very cheery Hazza. You can see the two of them playing in this photo which was the only one we took for some reason, so it's not a great shot but you get the gist of it.

2.) The bath. Oh, the love affair with the bath. There were two major responses with the bath - the first was when she would toddle off into the bathroom and rush right up to the rim of the bath and look in...only to find nothing. Nada. No bubbles, no running water, no steam, nothing. A big boo hoo to that. Harriet would look forlornly down in to the tub, back up at me and then give a little sigh of resignation before turning around and toddling back out of there. The other reastion was when we'd take her hands to walk into the bathroom when it was time for her actual bath. WELL! Then such a commotion was never before seen! Flailing arms, excited squeals (well, they happen all the time but still), the legs would start boucning up and down. We soon realised that in order to get her undressed easily for the bath it had to happen before she saw the bath, otherwise it was a nightmare trying to undress her because of the crazy limbs akimbo! I have the bath with her and we sing the bubbles song ("Bubbles bubbles everywhere/bubbles here and bubbles there/bubbles on my nose and hair/bubbles bubbles everywhere". Ok, I'm no lyricist, leave me alone!).

Harriet also met up with KJ (aka Kristy) who was up in Sydney to meet with her cousin's baby, so she decided to undergo a baby-a-thon and see what Miss Harriet Dora was also up to. We met at Clovelly and after eyeing her off a tad suspiciously for a while, Harry decided all was good with Kristy and decided to go on in for a closer look. KJ had to make sure her bracelet was rather securely attached to her wrist, as well as protect her ears from baby grab attacks. It was very cute to see Harry hang out with KJ and they both seemed to have a blast. Harriet was also wearing the very cute top that KJ and her gorgeous mother had bought in the UK for her - it says 'cute chick' on it below an illustration of a..well...a chick! A chicken I guess if you want to be more precise (and let's face it, when *don't* I want to be more precise?

Here Harriet is engaged in one of her top five pasttimes - baby wipe destruction! So much joy and happiness from one baby wipe you never did see. Her favourite thing to do with them is grab them from me, hold it aloft and make a very loud growly roar sound, then bring it back down to mouth level and start chewing off hunks of wipe, all the while ripping apart the rest of the wipe with gusto and voice. After rolling around in her mouth for a while the offending wipe (by now a small ball of mush) is spat out and a new section is chosen carefully from the wipe bits lying scattered at her feet. The wipe game is heaps of fun and not that messy really, since the wipe doesn't actually ingrain itself in the carpet or stain clothes or anything, so it's very satisfying for both of us!

And finally we have a shot of Harry in her Quinny Buzz. It's a pretty cool stroller in a funky purple colour (of course!). It can be turned to face us which is her preferred state of being. We would take it on regular trips up to King St when we were checking the post office box. This is a rare shot because not long after strapping her in this way she decided quite emphatically that she didn't like the arm straps, so now she just has the lap sash on. She also loves to lean forward and chew on the black felt that lines the front bar. I didn't actually realise this until one day I held on to the bar in order to pop her in and felt a whole lot of little bumps. Looking closer I realise they were teeth marks! Then I checked out Harriet's mouth and there was a whole pile of black flecks around her lips! Rascal! So now there's a bib wrapped around the bar that she can chew on instead. Weirdo.

Farewells and Flights

YAY!! So we finally have broadband and I can finally do a retrospective. Before we left I met up with the lovely Claire and her daughter Mia who we met in the local Mothers' Group. Poor Mia has had a rough time knowing Harriet, since her screams and squeals send Mia into a crying headspin. But you gotta hand it to the girl, she knows how to learn quickly - after a month of Harry screaming down her house, my house, the park, swimming pools, etc. little baby Mia learnt that the eardrum bleeding wasn't malicious and Harriet could almost get excited without screaming around her. It was just that she loved Mia SO much, you know?!

In fact Harriet loved Mia just enough to want to take her over to Sydney, nose and all. We tried to get a photo with the two babies looking straight at the camera. We tried singing, hand games, Cameron helped out admirably (Hannah's older brother), but all to no avail. So we'll have to make do with this shot of Harriet ripping out Mia's nostril - and let's face it, it's probably a more accurate representation of their relationship anyway. You can see Little Miss Chilled (aka Hannah) sitting behind them taking in a book.



Hannah is Jenny's daughter and Harriet and Hannah have had more in common over the course of their short lives than just the first letter of their names. They have seemed to develop along almost identical paths! Albeit Harry is probably a bit longer but that's about it - both prefer sitting up to rolling, both prefer to watch other babies move around than pursue their own mobility, and I think they look a bit similar too, you can definitely see it in this photo anyway. Hannah's poncho ROCKS and I felt the necessary umbrage for Harriet that she doesn't have a bevy of knitaholics in her corner knocking out the ponchos. But then again, it's not as if this one has any concerns over having 'stuff'.

So we finally made it on to the plane after much squealing and screaming in the departure lounge. Her Nana Lee, Grandad and Auntie Brooke all said a sad goodbye and then we were off and up in the air. The movie was something so dull that neither James nor myself ended up watching it. I overcame a huge burden and actually pressed the hostie button! *shock* *horror* It was so that they could take our trays early and let Harriet have a bit of space. Flying with Jan/Nana/James' mum made life a whole heap easier since she was able to hold Harriet whilst we ate and then she came back on to me when Jane got her food. The gorgeous little sweet pea slept for almost all the flight, and just to prove it we snapped some photos that you can see here. It was a bit hard to get good ones because the sun was so bright out of the window, but Harriet was very still (you know, what with the sleeping and all) that we were able to get some good ones.

She hadn't slept in my arms like this since she was about 3mths old, so it was actually quite a lovely thing to see her all crashed out, just the rise and fall of her chest and the warm milky breath on my arm to let me know she was still alive. Sorry about the bad boob shot in this last photo, but you shouldn't be looking at that anyway! Look at the baby you horrible pervs! hee hee