Scrubber

This morning I found myself on my hands and knees scrubbing the carpet - twice.

The first time was cleaning up poo on the carpet courtesy of Milly. Stupidly when I first saw it I thought it was dog poo and wondered how a dog had gotten in the flat. Then as I watched Milly drag the poo around with her feet and get her hands in it I remembered she was not wearing a nappy. Note to self: don't let Milly have nappy-free time in the flat.

The second instance was spilt yogurt, this time thanks to Henry. He did apologise, bless him. Note to self: reinforce flat rule of all yogurt to be consumed in areas that are not carpeted.

So now with only three weeks until we move I'm thankful that our new house has floorboards.

PS. We are still without a camera so no photos sorry.

So long Sydney

After such a long time deliberating we have decided to move to Newcastle. It was an incredibly hard decision, but we have finally made it and are now doing what we must to make the transition a reality.

Mosman has been an interesting place to live. Really it is a beautiful suburb with lots of big old trees and lovely parks. It’s been great for the kids. It’s also the suburb where people walk their cats on leashes, designer dog water bowls sit outside expensive clothes shops for the clientele’s pampered pooches, mums at the kid’s playground bring china cups and saucers to drink their tea, and the median price of a house is almost $2 million.

Our good news is we have found a house in Newcastle and relocate in five weeks. The excitement of finally owning our own home is hard to contain, and to have space inside and a garden for the kids is something we have only dreamt about.

It has three bedrooms plus a study, two bathrooms, three toilets, two living areas, a dining room, modern kitchen and separate laundry, gas fireplace and air conditioning, a large private terrace and good sized manicured fenced garden. It is split level with polished floorboards and lots of storage. There are good schools close by as well. We can’t decide on what it is about the house that we like the most – the space, garden or more than one toilet. But the one thing we can both agree on is how much we will love having a dishwasher.

E18

Apologies for the lack of recent photos. We've had a disaster. We have a Canon Ixus digital camera and on the weekend it stopped working. The camera's display window is black and shows an error notice "E18". When Michael googled E18 the following message was top of the list:

"The E18 error message is the worst that can happen to an owner of the Canon IXUS. By manky mechanics the camera cannot drive their lens out any longer and displays the error "E18" in the lcd display. If the warranty of the camera has ran out it's not worthwhile to repair it by Canon in most cases."

This was not good news.

Step by step

On Sunday, 1 June 2008 at 12.24pm Milly took her first steps. She was in the kitchen with Michael and simply took a few shuffling steps forward. She looked pretty pleased with herself, I was smiling proudly, and Henry couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. Michael was excited because as the bread winner of the household there is rarely a chance for him to witness these big milestones. As luck would have it he was there when Henry took his first steps too.

Since Sunday Milly hasn't really shown that much interest in walking. Occassionally we'll stand her up and encourage her to "walk to Dadda", and she'll teeter towards him like a smiling Frankenstein before falling into his arms for a hug. But anyone who already has children will know that once they start walking, it just gets that little bit more difficult to keep your eyes on them - and for that reason we are not forcing her.

Having seen all the attention Milly has received, Henry now likes to practise his walking too and fall into our arms for a congratulatory cuddle.