Up To Your Ankles in Ducks and Other Animal Adventures Each week Abby and I like to take a ‘field trip’. Nothing fancy, just something other than going to the beach or the mall or to a different beach. Our most recent excursion was to the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG). The RBG is located right, smack, in the center of the city. Much like Central Park is for NYC. Les’ office is actually only one block away from the west entrance and we’ve meandered through it a time or two before. But on this recent outing Abby and I got serious [View Full Entry]

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A Word on Words and an Exciting Purchase It’s not hard to get understand people here, most words are what you think they are. The words that are different are more just quaint than totally bizarre. For example here we say prams, instead of strollers. And ‘hire’ when you mean rent, or hail, or lease. For example, “On the way back from Bronte Beach, Abby’s pram snapped in half so we had to hire a cab to go to the baby store and purchase a new one.” Diapers are ‘nappies’, naps are ‘sleeps& [View Full Entry]

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Dangerous When Wet Well summer arrived this weekend. It’s been raining all week in a relentless downpour that makes going anywhere with a stroller a waterlogged event. But at a certain point getting soaked seems like a super fun activity compared to one more hour inside with a one year old. So to finally see the sun, not to mention a hot, crispy sun, was a fabulous turn of events. Apparently the entire Eastern Suburbs agreed because Bondi Beach was jumpin’. The atmosphere here is a strange combination. It’s like South Beach meets South Street. For those of you fro [View Full Entry]

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It’s been six weeks but we finally found a babysitter! (Who was counting anyway?). She came this past Saturday night and we hit the town! We went back to Darling Harbor since we liked it so much by day. Sure enough it was wonderful at night as well. All the restaurants along the water were lit up, as were the boats in the bay. There were people milling about, street performers, and even roaming merchants selling those little doodads that light up, flash and spin. It seems tacky, nonspecific souvenirs are a universal thing. We had drinks at one end, by [View Full Entry]

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Here’s something rather startling. I can track the hit rate of each of my blogs. Not who reads them, just that the page has been ‘viewed’. On average I get about 100 hits per blog and I pick up a few each day - - so some older blogs are up around 140 and some recent ones are still at like 50. But I noticed that my entry on the IKEA bus driver had a crazy high hit rate. It’s currently close to 800 hits and growing faster than any others. I couldn't figure it out at first. But then I [View Full Entry]

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Here’s the thing about the metric system. I know that it makes more sense. I understand that everything can fold up nicely into its next logical unit. I get the beauty and simplicity of things divisible by powers of 10. But what no one tells you is that all the logic in the world can’t override what you feel. I can pretty much accurately tell you when I’ve walked a mile. I can just feel it. Likewise I can eyeball a glass of water and come close to telling you how many ounces are in it. This is because my ordinary [View Full Entry]

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Birthday, Baby and Bono: Three Quick “shout-outs” Ok, first, today is Les’ birthday, and since he probably won’t get home in time to have a party with Abby and me tonight, we made this poster to bring the party to him at work. Happy birthday!!! Secondly, to my Boston-based mom’s group, here’s an update on the “No Nappy” rule at the beach and beach-baby pool. I still stand by the fact that a naked baby is easier to deal with from a sticky-sand-standpoint, but it’s a little hard to try and make friends with other moms when your child [View Full Entry]

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The Kangy Angy Indeed! This past weekend was Labour Day here in New South Wales. Not anywhere else. Not, for example in Queensland. It’d be as if Pennsylvania had a big holiday but not New Jersey. At any rate, it worked to our benefit since we live in the state with the holiday and so we went off to Hunter Valley for two days. Hunter Valley is a big wine area about 2 hours north of Sydney. It’s a popular getaway place full of little resorts and vineyard B&Bs. We were able to grab a last-minute deal over the internet and [View Full Entry]

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Good, Cheap Furniture This morning Abby and I went out on our jog. As we ran along the promenade I began to notice a smell. Then it became an odor. Finally it spiraled into a foul funk. I noticed people around me making faces and covering their noses. It was like jogging through a thousand sweaty feet that had been in a thousand damp socks. That determined for us that we would not play at the beach during the day, but rather go out some place to play. My neighbor told me later that they were spraying manure somewhere nearby. If [View Full Entry]

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These Flip-Flops Were Made For Walking If there is a theme for this past week it’d be ‘walking’. Not just strolling about, but gigantic, large scale, feet numbing walks. I never mean for it to happen, but somehow on these sorts of walks we end up going for just about forever. Miles and miles and miles. It’s never for lack of planning, and it’s never for the lack of a good map, since I always have one and can read them very well. I think it’s just an enthusiasm to reach a certain point that never flags despite major obstacles. When [View Full Entry]

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