Home again- back from 2 holidays

In case anyone is wondering, we are all home again, and doing well. We had a fun time at the beach... fun is interpreted differently with an 18-month old though. I've decided. Fun takes into account the relative amounts and pitch of the tantrums, the duration of them, and then compares them to the length and power of the giggling bright-eyed delight of every other moment that doesn't involve a melt-down. Fun is running on an endless expanse of sand for the first time, sitting down in it and covering yourself in it from head to toe as quickly as possible. Joy is splashing and jumping in this strange new salty water, while parents smile and watch extra carefully for dangerous things you cannot imagine... stonefish for example, which are the same colour as the sand, look like stones, and are perfectly harmless, unless you step on them. Then they puff up into insanely poisonous balls of spike, There were way too many stonefish in the water for me. We did a good job keeping out of their way :)

There are other nice memories too... Sophie's vocabulary growing every day "b(ea)ch," "hot," "no car!"... eating all our meals outside on the balcony looking over the ocean, going for long walks through the little town, visiting the reef aquarium - Sophie really enjoyed that. She got to touch starfish and coral, look at massive big fish and all kind of colourful little ones right up close, and participate in feeding some sea turtles. And I thought it was pretty fantastic too.

And now we're home again. Feeling pretty amazingly lucky, blessed, fortunate - pick your favourite adjective. It had been so so long since we'd had any kind of real vacation, and now Sophie and I are just home from 2. And after being away for the best part of a month, it is really peaceful and right to be home.
But I haven't really mentioned Christmas, or for that matter any of the latter days of our excellent journey home in Minnesota. I guess that's the tricky thing about having 2 places to put things - There are heaps of photos up on facebook, and a few videos too. It's much easier to upload them there. But I'll just put a few favourites here.
In summary of our trip to Minnesota...

Sophie very quickly acclimatised to the cold weather, and started to love it! By the 2nd time she played in the snow, she was giggling and throwing herself into it. By the 3rd week of our trip, she was asking walking to the door and asking to play outside in the "coooooold" first thing every morning.

We made a couple of trips to the Childrens' Museum with friends, and we all enjoyed that!

Sophie learned to walk while we were there. She left home as a crawler who could take a few steps, and came home a walker (with a few good bruises and a whole lot of determination to go faster and faster!)

I had the rare opportunity to share long, grown up conversations with my family and some of my closest friends. To play games and hang out and share Christmas and laughing and good food being together. Those memories are the most unforgettable Christmas goodies for me this year.

And Sophie - she absolutely loved her cousins and her grandparents. It was so fun for her to meet all kinds of big people who love her, she basks in the centre of attention :) But her big boy cousins Noah and Aaron, they were pretty exciting! She loves to point to them in photos still and tell long stories about them.

And now we are so happy to be home. Sophie's happy to be home to her vegimite and mangos and her daddy. But we're also missing everyone we got to see in Minnesota. Thanks to all of you who welcomed us into your homes and gave us such excellent memories. Thank you!

Blessings and peace and a very happy New Year!

In Flight stories

Sophie and I send greetings to wherever you are in cyberspace or real life - from the cold and slushy, cloudy and friendly Northern land of St. Paul, Minnesota. Where 6:30 a.m. still looks like the middle of the night, and feels a bit like the end of a long day. Where everything is backward and familiar, strange and home at the same time.

I don't really have time to be writing yet, I should be in bed now. But I wanted a chance to say hello and share a quick story or two for anyone who might be wondering "how did the flight go? how did Sophie go?" The short answer is it was long and exhausting and she did surprisingly well. She did sleep, and she did play, and she did eat well and smile at lots of people (and stare in disbelief at most of them.) She absolutely loved looking out the windows at airports - telling me about all the vehicles and the people - pointing them all out and even using gestures and sound effects to tell me about what they were doing. The up close view of planes landing on the runway at Brisbane was a real hit!

The hardest parts were waiting in long slow lines, being delayed on the ground, and take offs and landings (because she had to sit still in a seatbelt on my lap and couldn't sleep, play, eat or any of her favourite things). All the other times she was fantastic. We even got through LAX in a peaceful and relatively painless daze.

And she is adjusting really well to the time difference too. She's already back on her normal schedule. She's sleeping well and adjusting to all the new people and environments really well. She's been far less jet-lagged than me, from the very beginning.

It's been a really lovely trip so far. Just catching up with family and a few old friends at home. Here are a few photos....it is really the mutual admiration society around here with the Grandparents!

Her first true encounter with the snow today - in my sister Loren's backyard. Oh dear, that was not a happy little Aussie! The worst part was just getting dressed for it! Out in the snow itself, she was... well, see for yourself. I wouldn't say it was traumatic, but she was not exactly impressed! We will have to ease her into it and try some strategies to entice her better for the next time. I'll let you know how it goes!

"Mama. Seriously. Can we just go in and get all these ridiculous things off now?"

Ok, I just looked at all these shots again, and realized that they aren't the smilliest pics of Sophie that we've ever seen. It has been impossible so far to get a photo of her smiling! But I assure you, she is well and content, and often very happy. I just don't seem to be able to get much photographic evidence of it - the happiest shots of her moving about keep turning out so fuzzy.

Happy weekends to all. Watch this space for more stories, and hopefully some better photos, coming soon :)

Walking

It's finally happening! Sophia has taken her first independent steps. Well, she's taken one step several times, and two steps a couple of times. She stands up in the middle of the floor all by herself, and congratulates herself with huge smiles and clapping. Then she plops down and laughs. Thank goodness for all that padding- there's a lot of falling in this stage! She walks to daddy and then turns around and...well, by that time she's usually so excited, giggling and laughing clapping, that's it's more falling than walking back to mama. But it's just so much fun to see her starting to let go of that one finger that she usually pulls all around the place, and start taking a step or two by herself. Watch out world! Another toddler on the loose!

She's loving swimming lessons too. Today she took her first few paddles swimming from the teacher to mama, all by herself. She was so proud!

And climbing! One of the great things she's learning from swimming lessons is to climb. We teach her to climb out of the pool - elbow, elbow, tummy, knee, other knee...yay! (Yes, it does take quite a bit of time!) And she's using that skill in other places now too - playgyms and parks, slides, small chairs...she gets a bit grumpy that she can't quite climb up on our couch by herself yet.

All of you lovely people in Minnesota that we're going to visit - we can't wait to see you. Only 19 more days now...and I am counting down! Any tips or suggestions for travelling ( a REALLY long way) by myself with an energetic toddler just beginning to walk? Any tips for packing, entertaining, preparing, etc? please post! Now, if only I could be motivated to write all my report cards and do all my school paperwork...when all I really want to do is play with my daughter and plan and prepare for the holidays! Any suggestions for that?!

And when is Thanksgiving? I'm lazy and don't have it on any of my Aussie calendars here. Isn't it next Thursday? Or did I already miss it? Anyway, wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving - whenever it is/was.
Loveyou,
alicia

The lives of the busy...

...are too rarely documented. Ironically, when we are happiest and busiest, I seem to have the least amount of time to find something to say about it. Things have been good.
Here are some highlights.
Danny has changed careers. He has left the insurance industry and, after a long road of hard work, he is a full time pilot and flight instructor. He actually Likes his job! It's meant a few changes for us all - he now works every weekend, and pretty long hours. His days off are Wednesdays and Thursdays, which I don't work either, so we have ourselves a mid-week weekend.
Sophie has started swimming lessons - I take her there every Saturday morning for half an hour. she's learning to blow bubbles, paddle kick, and not freak out when she gets water splashed in her face. It's great fun - loads of laughs.
Dan's new schedule has led to other changes. We've started going to a new church - right across the road from the aeroclub where Danny works. He meets us there Sunday evening right after he gets off work, so we can still manage to go to Mass together as a family, which means a lot to us.
What else...
On our last "weekend," Danny and I went out and bought my Christmas present- a new camera. and then we took it for a test run with about 400 photos of Sophie in the backyard. You can see a few of them here. I think I'll put up a few more on Facebook. Umm... I might get just a little bit photo happy with this camera. I'm really liking it :)












Sophie is finally keen to walk. In the past month, she wants to be on her feet all the time. Now she pulls up on things, pushes around anything that will move, and climbs up on parents and walks them around wherever she chooses to go. She can walk with just one hand, and has just started letting go to stand for a few seconds before plopping. She's even tried lunging forward on her own a few times, but it's a quick and smiling crash. Still, at the moment, it's all about the wobbly walking everyday. :)

She likes to feed herself. She's quite good at it now, depending on what the food is. Some things are easier to actually get onto the spoon than others. She's quite an expert with yoghurt.




More events... We went to an airshow on a Saturday a few weeks back, and had a blast. A long, hot, tiring, wonderful day. I'm making a digital scrapbook of it. I just can't help myself.
Also we just got back from our first little trip away. We spent 2 days and one night on Moreton Island with Wayne & Kate and the girls. It's a little sand island just accross the bay from Brisbane. It took about an hour and a half to get there by boat. Sophie had her first boat ride, her first play on the beach, and her first night sleep away from home (since the hospital). It all went really well! A scrapblog and facebook photos of that coming soon too.
Today we're resting and enjoying being home. Next week I'm back to work, and yep, that's going well too. We're in the last term of the year - the busiest one. Just 8 weeks left of the school year, and then we're off North for Christmas!
Lots of love,
alicia and the happy little Smith family.