23 months old and talking

William is such fun to play with and do things with these days. We’ve really been enjoying doing things as a family, like going to aquariums, swimming in the pool, even a weekly visit to the park to play on the slide and swings. I loved the chances we had in Australia to go to the beach a few times.


When we left for Australia, William was mostly saying made up words of his own – “too-tar” and "up-ar-la". I guess that at this stage, I was a little concerned that William wasn’t saying many words. Andrew said that the normal range of the number of words that a two year old can say is 5-2000. Well, at least William will be in the normal range, I thought, with the approx 10 words he can say (uh-oh, oh dear, raaa (the noise a lion makes), up, no, more, mama, dada, choo-choo (for train)). Since then though, he is getting much more interested in having a go at repeating words we say to him, and also succeeding in learning many new words. In Melbourne he learnt to say 'dog'. While I was in San Francisco, he learnt light, bubble, bye-bye and hello. New words I’ve noticed since I’ve been back include wheel, please, baa (the noise a sheep makes), wire, teddy and ball. He has even been trying to say colours after us - black, yellow, blue. Very well done William!

Tassie

Tasmania is sometimes called the Apple Isle, and as we were there in apple season, we got to sample some of the produce. We also went to a Devil Park to see the Tasmanian Devils - whose wild population is being ravaged by a transmissible infectious cancer. The devils in captivity haven't caught it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease



After a couple of busy weeks in and around Melbourne, we all really enjoyed 5 days in Tasmania, staying with friends Mel and Stu, who live halfway up the side of Mt Wellington, which overlooks Hobart (capital city of Tasmania). Even in Summer, there can be snow on the mountain peaks in Tassie, and so it was no surprise that there was some while we were there at the end of Autumn.

Mel in the lush green forest - it does rain a fair bit in Tassie.

This is the view off the sideof Mt Wellington, taken on one of the few different walks we did on the local trails from Mel and Stu's house.


More than half of Tasmania's land area is National Parks. We had a lovely walk one afternoon around Waterfall bay.

Looking down over the edge - something I wasn't brave enough to do.

And another lovely walk in Mt Field National park were we saw the multi level Russell Falls.....

The trees in Tassie can be quite large too! William at 22 months of age provides the scale.

Visiting friends

In addition to some relaxing, and lots of family events, we caught up with some friends in and around Melbourne. In fact, we drove to Somers, Geelong and Elphinstone. Here is William meeting Mell and Danny’s twin boys, Jake and Tyson, for the first time. William thought that their baby toys were quite fun to play with and wanted to keep passing them toys which were out of their reach (which was very sweet to watch).

A number of friends had trampolines Australian houses all have much more space for such things than most in the UK). Here he is on Justine and Mark’s at Elphinstone. Mostly he liked running around the trampoline in a circle, or lying flat and being bounced into the air by Andrew.

Alice and Ian: est. 16 May 2009

New things: sliding doors, hoses, fly wire & a dog!

William discovered a few new things in Melbourne that we don’t have at home in Oxford. There were sliding doors at a few different people's houses that we visited, and he was very keen on opening and closing them…continually. I think that if he could speak, he’d make it clear that we must get one at home. They were a bit hit.

Another success was playing with hoses with a trigger controller on the end. Mum introduced William to one at the beach, and he was hugely entertained by the fact that water shot out the end when he squeezed the trigger. I have a little movie of him laughing as the force of the water pressure pushes him backwards into the shed door, which ends with him turning towards me and squirting my camera. He also found that pretty entertaining. He just chuckled and chuckled every time he made water squirt out of the hose. Maybe once Andrew gets his water butt installed, we’ll get a hose so that William can water the garden for us.



Slightly more surprising was his interest in fly wire. The UK doesn’t have the mosquito and fly problem that Australia has (which is one of the reasons I love living here!) So William hadn’t come across the fine mesh that most Australian hoses have to stop insects getting inside while the windows are open. William especially liked leaning with his full body weight against the fly wire at our friends Mel and Stu’s house – it was very unnerving to watch, seeing as the fly wire was the only thing stopping him from falling out the window.

But William’s best discovering in Melbourne was Toby, my mum and dad’s dog. Before we arrived, they had been a little worried about what Toby would make of William, as Toby doesn’t know many little children. There had been talk of shutting Toby away if he didn’t get on well with William. But they got on fantastically and became a team. William would throw Toby’s ball, and loved it when Toby fetched it back for him. William kept all his toys (generously leant to us by friends) in the same box as Toby’s toys, and regularly tipped the whole lot out onto the floor. Toby cleaned up all the food that William dropped on the floor. William learnt how to take Toby’s bowl over to the bag of Toby’s food, and put some dried pellets in the bowl for Toby to eat. But the most exciting thing about Toby for William, was taking him for walks. Such a shouting and fetching of the leash there was, when we asked William to take Toby for a walk. It was quite an event. So, at least once a day, William (and Grannie or Grandpa) took Toby around the block for a walk.

Melbourne, pt I

Here come the photos!

We went to the zoo and the aquarium. Here are Jo and William pretending to be elephants.




William and Andrew watching the shark.

We caught up with more friends (Pip, Woody, Andrew, Jo, Wiiliam, Whelan and Julia in this pic) down at the beach at Somers (where William loved collecting stones, seaweed and shells to put on his first ever sandcastle!).

Sherrin!

We have so many recent pictures to show you and stories to tell after our trip home. But, before I start with them all, here is one taken just before we left, demonstrating that William has learnt how to blow through a straw.


You may ask how the 24 hr flight went...? Well, on the way out, it could have been worse. He didn't scream too much, and was generally happy. However, he was so excited to have his own set of headphones, which could be plugged in and out as often as he wished, that he only slept for a few hours. We arrived pretty exhausted, and Andrew was probably thinking regretful thoughts that he'd offered to fly home by himself with William. However, William was great on the flight home, and slept for most of the first, and some of the second, legs of the flight.

The non-Aussies reading this may not know what a Sherrin is. It is the brand name of the makers of the Aussie Rules football. One of the first of many friends that we visited while home were Sam and Ryan (who, interestingly are the inverse of us - she is Welsh and he is Aussie), who we'd last seen in Abergavenny at their wedding. Well, Ryan has a Sherrin in great condition, and signed by some of the Essendon Football team - William liked it alot! Ryan was very trusting to let William play with it.

Weeeeeeee

I won't say what it is exactly that we've been applauding William for recently, but so far, there have been 8 occasions for cheers:

14th April

16th April

18th April

20th April

22nd April

25th April

27th April

30th April

Then we went and travelled to the other hemisphere, and slowed down progress somewhat. But trying to get back into the habit of it now in Oxford. Of course, April was also the month during which he vomited 11 times......we did a lot of washing that month.