New library - virtual tour

There's a virtual tour now for the new library... so you can see all the bright colours, the courtyard, and the seating.

Thomas again

Harrison is so into Thomas the Tank Engine now... the Wiggles are taking a bit of a back seat (although Dorothy and Henry were being squeezed into the back of a Troublesome Truck yesterday). We are using a big Lego Thomas set as "incentive" (did someone say bribery) for getting him to sleep in longer. Each morning if he waits quietly for us to get him up he gets another part of the set. He's only got two bits left now, but it has been bliss hearing him stir early, and then lie quietly waiting for us to come and get him. He has read the "newspaper" that came with the Thomas and identified that there is a James and a Toby set that he doesn't yet have. So I guess birthday and Christmas are taken care of now.

Thomas

This is a shot of Rhys and Harrison with Harrison's new Thomas the Tank Engine one night when Rhys was staying at our house while his parents went out. Harrison got a huge Thomas set from grandma for Christmas (it was Andrew, Tristan and Jeremy's old set gathered over about 10 years). It's all battery operated and the tracks are quite complex. I'm not sure that they even make that type of set anymore. After a few incidents of trains being dropped on tiles, and many requests for the carriages to be re-coupled, we decided to put it away for another year or so. Harrison is playing with a Lego Duplo version now. It's not as fancy, but more robust and probably better for his level of fine motor skills at the moment. He can easily put the carriages together and has fun swapping Percy and Thomas's faces around and making them the wrong colours. Hopefully this means that when Harrison is old enough to deal with the overpasses, smaller engines, batteries etc, the big set will still be in working order.

Book launch

Last night the UWA law school had a book launch for books published in the last 12 months. There were 5 already published, and although Simon's two (the Admin Law one and the Native Title one) aren't yet published, he got a mention as well. We went to dinner to Soda Cafe afterwards (Rachel was babysitting). Still can't quite get used to the price of eating out over here. Everywhere seems to charge like a fine dining establishment. You seem to jump from Subway or suburban Chinese to paying $30 for a main.

Marg's move

Marg and Neil are visiting this weekend - looking for places to live. Marg has given up on the law firm lifestyle (or lack there of), and taken a job as general counsel for a company over here. (Good on her!) She and Neil will be long distance lovers for a while until Neil is able to sort our his business and move over. She's looking at living in Leederville if she can find somewhere nice. As a consequence we're going to dinner perhaps to Anna's Vietnamese tonight... it's to be negotiated as we have to bring Harrison and we're not sure how well he'll go to sleep in his stroller. Simon's voting for Hillarys because there's lots of space, but I'm a bit over the food there. Nothing very interesting and the couple of "real" restaurants are really noisy and expensive. Plus it's very overcast and drizzly today, so walking around the beach and boardwalk isn't very appealing. And of course, it's not in Leederville!

Me 'n' Bandit

Last night I put Harrison to bed (with his fluffy dog, Bandit) and went off for a shower. When I got out of the shower H was sitting up in bed calling out "Me 'n' Bandit need some more milk! Me 'n' Bandit need some more milk!". When I brought the milk in, he had the first drink, and then confessed "Bandit doesn't want any" as he lay back down to go to sleep.

Bread incident

We're back in the swing of things. Work is pretty busy, and I can't decide whether to sit in the library or in the law school (my instincts tell me the law school). Harrison is happy at daycare, but we did have an incident last week where he was given a piece of bread, which triggered some diarohea and vomiting. Not too bad, and it was a genuine accident - the staff have altered some procedures so that it doesn't happen again. It was our first experience of Harrison eating something with gluten in it. We are trying to teach him to ask "is this gluten free" instead of "is this alright for me", but with a toddler it's risky relying on him to be alert enough to avoid the wrong foods just yet.

We recommenced our Pilates/swimming routine on Sat morning. It was actually cool and windy (as opposed to 40 degrees), so Harrison didn't get his paddle. He and Simon played bear caves instead while I exercised. Harrison was the bear - he had a kitchen in his cave and made Simon muffins and cake. Simon's having a bit of a snooze in front of the cricket as I type. He did the vacuuming and cleaning while I pushed H around Lake Monger this morning. Speaking of H, he's just woken up from his nap, and we're off to the zoo shortly.