A Day In Tigertown!

I haven't converted Kel to football fanaticism but she at least pays attention to how the Tigers are going and when they return to their spiritual home for a game at Leichhardt Oval she is as keen as my dad and I to go.

A great sunny winter day, Luca off having fun with his Australian Grandma so we were off to the footy. My dad showed Kelly and I the house that he spent his first eleven years in (and it hasn't changed a bit!).

A full house of Tiger fans urging them on our team had a great win over the competition leaders. A few beers at the Leaguesy on the way home to complete a fun day.

And the next day all three of us were on the front page of the sports section of the main Sydney newspaper ... albeit along with a section of about 400 others in the crowd. I'll take my fame wherever I can get it.

Luca Lingo Lesson #1

Some of you may remember my Aussie Lingo Lessons. Well now that I have an 18 month old I thought I would post a little Luca Lingo Lesson, those I have desipered and those I haven’t…if you understand those I haven’t, please please let me know!

The words we understand:
More – Give me more of what I want NOW
Shuuuuzzzz – Shoes (currently the most adorable black and white slip on Vans)
Tst – Toast
UP – Pick me up out of my cot now, usually yelled from his crib
SHHHHH – Sleeping time, the traditional shhhh noise including the finger held up over his lips
Duckduckduckduck – Duck
Bol – Ball
Ish – Fish
LuLuLu – Luca this is what he says when you ask him his name
Mummy – Please give me more food now

Yet to be determined:
Daaadlea
Whowhowho
Woah

Some how I think this is the first of many lingo lessons, can’t you imagine a lesson when he is 16 using words like sick to talk about something cool?

Cheers - kel

Look, up in the sky

Is it a bird? (quite possibly) Is it a plane? (most likely)



Luca's new found passion for pointing out birds and planes got a workout this morning with a trip to Rosebery to check out a fabric printing business that Kelly had long wanted to visit - right in the flight path to Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport. The planes were flying low and flying often.

We were supposed to be going up the coast this weekend but a mix up by the agents saw the place double booked so we tried to make the most of it at home by visiting a few favourite places and places we have wanted to go to for ages.

We also had fried chicken ... a surefire way to make any weekend special!

Luca

Fall

Amazingly the water is still warm and the sun making regular appearances. It’s Fall in Sydney, the days are shorter, the wind is cooler, the leaves are falling but we’re still at the beach. Have I mentioned how much I love living here? Mark and Luca at Freshie on Sunday. -kelly

Home sweet home

I arrived home from Paris on Wednesday morning. Paris is about 30 hours of travel from Sydney, a long long way away. Seeing Mark and Luca was fantastic, I think Luca grew taller while I was gone. He also mastered “Ut-Oh”, officially his first word. He says it and he knows what it means, the funny thing is that is the only word he knows, so he says it over and over and over. While I was gone Mark and Luca had some serious boy time, lots of footy, beer drinking and hanging out in their PJ’s. Mark, being the great dad that he is, taught Luca about gardening, the environment and water conservation. In other words it’s fun to pick up leaves and put them in the compost and watering from the watering can once each day is plenty. Here is apicture of Luca at the garden workbench playing in the buckets and dirt. Seems like someone might have a bit of a green thumb like his grandpa and daddy….-kel

Les Deux Moulins

Today was a beautiful cold sunny day in Paris. I started my morning in Montmarte where I looked up at Basilique du Sacre-Ceour as I sipped my morning café latte. After walking to the top of Sacre-Ceour, I explored the Montmarte quarter most of the morning, stopping for coffe at Les Duex Moulins, the café where Amile was a waitress. The café was very hip, surprisingly not very touristy and had fantastic atmosphere. With the sun shining in the windows and the French pop playing in the background I felt like I could have been a customer in the movie. After a ham a cheese crepe I was off to explore Euproe’s largest market, Marche auz Puces de St-Ouen. The antiques were amazing, all much to big for me to take home! I then headed via the metro to the Opera house where I explored the side streets to Place de la Madeline, then down to the Rue De Rivoli, across from the Louve where I strolled for hours in and out of shops, cafés and little courtyards. It was a fantastic day, my feet were dead tired from hours and hours of walking, after an early dinner I was sound asleep by 8:30! Tomorrow the rain is expected to be back, I will be off to explore Maris! –kelly

Sprinkles, showers, downpours…

It rained all day yesterday, I experienced Paris in just about every kind of rain in a 12 hour period. I stayed pretty dry with my umbrella, hat, scarf and long coat however my feet were another story they were soaked! I stuck mostly to a few shopping areas I wanted to see including Le Bon Marche (a very famous department store), Le Epicurean (amazing grocery store) and the Rue de St. Germaine. I had a afternoon coffee at Café de Flore, a famous hangout of Hemingway and a light dinner of French onion soup (fantastic) at a café across from Notre Dame. While it did rain most of the day, at abut 6:30 PM the skies parted and I was able to capture a few great pictures of Les Invalides during a long evening stroll. Au revoir –kelly

Bonjour from France

I've been in Paris this week for work and am staying over the weekend to see the sites, do some shopping and fill up on as many croissants as possible! Here are a few photos of the sunrise from my hotel room this morning, still suffering from Jet Lag I was up very early. My hotel is in Montparnasse, out my window I over look the Cimetiere du Montparnasse. It's a cold day today, about 38F and raining...but it's Paris, so I love it cold or not! -kel

Happy Easter

Luca playing with his new wooden lighthouse courtsey of the Easter Bunny. It's a nice warm day in Sydney today, we've had a quiet Easter this year enjoying time together over a nice long weekend. We wish you all a very Happy Easter. Cheers -kel

oh the joys of dinner time!

Going South: Coonawarra & back to Melb (Feb 20-23)

Out of Port Fairy we made good time to the South Australia border. We got out of the car to take the obligatory tourist pic "You are now entering South Australia" and parked next to a herd of cows. To date we had seen a lot of cool animals on this trip, both native and non-native, but it was the cows that Luca loved, we got back in the car and he was mooing - funny. We followed the coast all the way to Port MacDonnell (saw some emu's and kangaroos running/hopping along next to us as we drove along) then headed straight up to Penola (Coonawarra) through Mount Gambia (which aside from poor road signage has an amazing blue lake).


Coonawarra is a renowned red win area in Australia, something to do with the thin layer of terra rossa soil on a limestone base. The wine area is relatively small and low key but everything is very accessible, the people at the cellar doors very friendly and there were some beautiful old buildings at most of the wineries. A good mate of mine, Dave Ronson, is the GM of a big wine producer in Australia and they have a winery in Coonawarra so we were set up on a tour of the Brands winery. It was great, we learned a ton - thanks David. Some great wine and generally a good time and again Kelly booked a real winner for accomodation in the town of Penola.


After Coonawarra we headed back to Melbourne with a night in Ballarat. We spent our last night in Melbourne staying on Chapel St which is the shopping capital of the country. Kelly had a great time checking out the stores but I know she could have spent more time there if Luca and I weren't with her. We checked out downtown Melbourne - which is so busy even on the weekends and has some great arcades and reno's of old buildings and finally headed out to the airport to catch the flying Kangaroo home. The end of an awesome adventure.

Cheers all.

Going South: The 12 Apostles (Feb 19)

The morning ritual on this trip of a coffee and a pastry behind us we headed away from the windy roads into the Ottway National Park. We drove through some great forests to get to our first stop Cape Ottway Lighthouse. The Lighthouse was cool, some great views and some awesome old buildings. We explored around for a while but were careful to stay on the trails as there were signs warning that "snakes are active at this time of year". On the way out of national park we saw two colonies of koala's in trees just off of the road - this was the first time in all my years (and that is saying something) that I have seen a koala in the wild. They were so close and there were half a dozen of them.


Then onto the 12 Apostles - totally spectacular. You see them in ads for Australia but they are more impressive to see first hand. The whole coast down that way is rough and beautiful and after the Apostles we visted a few less famous rock formations that were also cool.

We stopped for lunch in Port Campbell and given it was pushing 100 degrees I also took a dip - the water was freezing, painful freezing and it took me a couple of attempts to dive in completely.

That night we stayed in Port Fairy, Kelly got us upgraded to a three bedroom suite so Luca had even more exploring to do. It also allowed us to have a seperate room from the little guy for the first time on the trip so we celebrated with a few beers and pizza.

Going South: The Great Ocean Road (Feb 18)

Across the Westgate bridge and off toward Geelong we got out of Melbourne early and just in time for Luca's morning nap. We stopped at the tourist info office in Geelong to get some maps of the Great Ocean Road. The ladies at the tourist info. loved their jobs and were proud residents of Geelong. When I told them I was skipping town as soon as they gave me the maps they went into overdrive on what there was to see in Geelong, where I should get some breakfast and why I should let Luca have a run around before continuing on toward Lorne. The ladies even pulled out the testimonial postcards from Canada and Sweden from people they had helped who were so inspired by Geelong they had to write and express their thanks upon returning home. Kelly and I are a much tougher sell - onwards to Lorne.

This first part of the Great Ocean Road has crazy roads, you hug cliffs on windy roads way above the ocean. I'm sure the view is great but I was keeping my eyes on the road. We got a laugh out of the road signs that showed a zig zaggy black line with "windy road next 120kms" - we are used to seeing the same signs with the label "windy road next 5kms" (or next 10kms...any distance far short of 100kms). We stopped in at Lorne for breakfast and Luca had a run in the park. Then on to Apollo Bay.



Kelly had booked a great place to stay for our first night out of Melbourne, it was out of town a ways and right above the ocean and had killer views. After checking in we headed in to Apollo Bay past rows of crazy wind swept trees and some cool houses. Apollo Bay is a cool small town itself but with temps in the mid 90's we headed straight to the beach.

If Luca has had more fun at any point in his life I would be suprised - he covered himself with muddy sand, he was a mess and when we finally left the beach he was none too impressed.

That night we enjoyed an awesome sunset and a swim in the pool and Luca enjoyed exploring a new hotel room. I would have been happy to stay here for a few days but at the same time I was looking forward to seeing the 12 Apostles and London Bridge.

Going South: Melbourne (Feb 16/17)

We were up before the roosters and Luca was looking at us thinking "what's going on here, I'm supposed to be waking them up" as we headed to the airport at quarter of five to catch the flying kangaroo south to Melbourne. The little guy took some serious entertaining on the plane but we got there, got our car and headed out on our first big family adventure (needless to say Kel was prepared with a bound book packed with printed sheets of all our reservations, maps, emergency numbers and shopping destinations she wanted to get to on the trip).

We haven't been to Melbourne since Kelly was in the morning sickness stage while expecting Luca and all that time I have been hanging out for a vanilla slice from Akland St, St Kilda - it was our first stop and I wasn't disappointed. After breaky we headed east to visit a couple of fabric stores Kel had had recommended to her by her blogging pals. I think Kel thought the stores were good, but to be honest Luca and I were just soaking up the warm weather and sunshine - something Sydney has not turned on this summer. It was actually cool to get out to the stores, they were in areas of Melbourne I hadn't been to before and I enjoyed having a sticky beak.

The rest of that day we did some catching up with our friends Adam and Amanda (who helped us enormously by loaning us their porta cot for the week) and Franc and Di. During our visits with both Luca managed to get himself soaking wet, first at a restaurant where he poured drinking water all over himself more than once and then at Franc and Di's house where Luca filled their daughter Sabrina's play kitchen sink with water and then splahed it everywhere. He had fun!

Sunday morning we headed up to Kelly's favourite, Brunetti off of Lygon Street in Carlton. We had a great breakfast and left with boxes full of Italian pastries.

Later we met Franc, Di and Sabrina again and headed out to Werribee open plain zoo. As I said in my last blog about Melbourne (April 2006), no trip to Melbourne would be complete without catching these guys, we have had some great times together over the years and I am so happy that Kelly has really connected with them as well. The zoo was pretty cool, I had expected to see the odd Kangaroo on the trip but not hippo's, rhino's, giraffe's and lions.

On our way back to Melbourne we stopped in at Williamstown for some Gelatto - we seriously had 50 places to choose from. I had never been to Williamstown, another side to Melbourne, and somewhere I would definitely visit again. We grabbed some Chinese take-away for dinner and Luca enjoyed exploring the hotel and then we all dozed off looking forward to the road trip part of the adventure starting tomorrow.

Bath Time

and you all thought I would only post photos of Luca in the bath! Luca doesn't like to take baths, we have no idea why. We are persevering however, he is your typical boy and is a dirt magnet! Our solution has been for either Mark or I to take a bath with him, so far so good. Photo above is of Mark and Luca last night in the bath! -kel

Petting Zoo

During the holidays we took Luca to the zoo. This was his first zoo visit and lucky Luca he was able to touch a small python. I was freaking out, meanwhile Luca could not take his hands off the beast! If given the choice I am sure he would have taken the snake home with him. Note that our next trip to the zoo Mark will be the one holding Luca for any snake petting! Luca is doing great and has made a full recovery from his sickness. We are enjoying summer with lots of beach time and lazy relaxing walks. Here's to no more snake encounters this year! -kel

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

This Christmas we had more to be thankful for than most. A week before Christmas Luca was airlifted from the Base Hospital in Port Macquarie (5 hrs drive north of Sydney) to the Royal Childrens Hospital at Westmead in western Sydney. We still don't know exactly what went wrong but the strong belief from the Pediatricians is that he contracted a major bacterial infection (they couldn't grow any cultures from his blood or urine so we still don't know for sure). The result was Luca running a fever in the 40's (Celcius) having racing heart at 210 bpm and a white blood cell count off the charts, he spent six days in hospital on a drip running some strong antibiotics through him. We are lucky that we had such an awesome Pediatrician in Port and just general great care in the first 12 hours. We were home for Christmas and Luca was almost back to normal so to say Christmas was a great day is an understatement.

Kelly and I spent the week in hospital sharing a tiny bed and managing a wash each. We were excited to get home and it was awesome to open all of the Christmas cards we got from our friends and family.

Post Christmas the weather has been near perfect and Luca is back to normal so we have been hitting the beach most every day and then heading home for a swim and some lounging around.
We would like to take the chance to pass on our best wishes for the new year. Our friends and family are incredibly important to us and you are all in our thoughts.

All the best for '08

Love,

Luca, Kelly & Mark

Tepee

For Luca’s first birthday we made him a tepee. He loves to hid in small spaces (usually between the wall and the couch), we saw a smaller version at the Paddington Markets in Sydney a few months ago and we decided to give it a try. It took a big longer than I expected, multiple trips to the fabric store and hardware store and lots of fine tuning to make it work just right. There are two matching pillows for the inside. The tepee is not perfect by any stretch, there is a tiny spot of blood on the white fabric (pin prick) and the last few weeks while I’ve been working on this it’s been very hot, I’ve sat at the sewing machine sweating and sewing, sweating and sewing…my own little sweat shop. I am glad I put the time into this…something tells me the tepee may up in the living room for the next few years…-kel

Meet Santa ...

Luca officially met Santa for the first time today. There was a bit of sizing up going on but generally the little man got along with the man in red very well and even managed to crack a smile. Being such a good boy today we said he can have what ever he asked Santa for ... knowing that he can only say "Mum" and "Dad" it was a deal I was only too happy to make!