I spend half my life waiting at cross walks...

Ethan passed out and still eating Cheezels...
Ethan passed out on the ferry home

The opera house from the ferry

Ethan and Kari on the beach

Ethan and me 'playing' in the ocean

The CBD of Sydney... where we live and work.

The Harbour Bridge and Opera House from the ferry

Ethan being brave and playing in the water

The weekend was a little more low key than the week itself ended up being, but that was fine with me. It seemed like we spent the entire week running around, so relaxing and taking things easy was definitely in order.

Our big out Saturday was to try and head to the beach and see what Ethan thought of the sun, sand and surf. To get to the beach you need to take a ferry that leaves from down by our office building. That part of the trip was a complete success. We made it to the ferry docks, got our tickets and were on the ferry and heading out across the bay. Ethan seemed to enjoy the ride and it was nice to get to see other parts of Sydney. Prior to this the most we had seen happened on the ride from the airport to the apartment.

As a side note… I can’t figure out what kind of people live in this apartment. All week there were people at the pool all day and in the workout room regardless of what time it was. And, it wasn’t elderly retired types either… most people are around our age or a little older. How ever those people can afford this place and still manage to dink around all I don’t know… but apparently I need to do some research and figure it out cause my current situation definitely wouldn’t allow that. Where’s the generational wealth when you need it..?

Anyway… back to the beach trip.

We got to Manly Beach, which is pretty fitting for me, around 11:00 am. Of course that is about the time Ethan starts to get tired. We got him changed into his suit and all lathered up in sunscreen so the pasty skin he inherited from me didn’t get burned. However, it was really warm that day and Ethan was sweating and this caused the sunscreen we applied to his forehead to run down into his eyes. That was probably strike two against the beach being a successful outing… strike one being that he was tired. Anyway, we forged on in the face adversity… and because we had spent all that time getting out there we were going in the ocean for picture opportunities if nothing else. Ethan’s enjoyment had now taken a back seat… Anyway, as it turns out Ethan isn’t the biggest fan of sand. We first noticed this at day care. There is a giant sandbox outside and sand is pretty much everywhere because of that. Each time Ethan would climb the steps to the slide he would invariably get it on his hand and before he went down the slide had to slap his hands together to get it all off. It’s a good thing he’s a little young to get bullied cause I’m sure that would open him up to all sorts of abuse. Back to the beach… at first Ethan didn’t even want to get down… we had to hold him the entire time and bend over so he could touch the water. Eventually he decided he wanted to get down and stand in the water. He did pretty well after that though anytime a wave splashed him he was quick to reach for one of us to be picked up.

After about 45 minutes of this, and a couple good pictures, we decided it was probably best to head back. Ethan was fading fast and we still had a 20 minute ferry ride plus another 15 minute walk to get home. So, back we went… Ethan lasted maybe 5 minutes into the ferry ride. He fell asleep on Kari eating Cheezels which is about the closest thing we can find to Cheetohs over here. It was pretty funny… he was laid out with his eyes closed but still eating.

Anyway… we got off the ferry and began our walk home and Ethan was still asleep in the stroller when an ambulance went by with sirens blaring and he woke up. Apparently the driver, who just happened to be female(I’m just putting that out there… interpret how you’d like), made an incorrect turn cause a minute later she was circling the block and passing us again. After that Ethan was up for good… this is not a good thing for us as he did not take another nap that afternoon. So, a long morning in the sun followed by a 25 minute nap leads to a long evening of Ethan being ornery and listening to us about as well as Homer does. Don’t get me wrong… its not like he listens to us all that well on a normal day… after all, he is stubborn like his mom not easy going like me. It was a taxing evening to say the least. I will admit I had a couple beers to relax that night… and they definitely did the trick. It helps the alcohol content of beers over here is about 1.5 times more than the US. Though… the cost is about 2 times more… Strike One against Australia. I’m using a lot of baseball references… I don’t know why. Just go with it.

Sunday morning arrived and it was spent much like Saturday afternoon just lounging around the apartment trying to keep Ethan as entertained as possible. Though the temperatures had dropped dramatically from the previous day. It was actually pleasant to go outside. While Ethan took his nap I finished putting my clothes away. Only took me a week… that’s pretty good considering how high I scored in procrastination with my job aptitude test. After Ethan woke up we set out to find the library. Using my trust Google maps I located the State Library of New South Wales. I figured how could you go wrong with the library of the entire state so off we went… We found it with no problem and then proceeded to sign up and get our library cards. At that time I asked Kari where she thought the fiction section was. We located a map on the wall. No fiction section. WTF? We’re at a library and no fiction section?! We looked at our little information sheet we got with our cards and in tiny print it says the library we were at was actually the STATE REFERENCE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. Hey sweet… good to know. Why don’t you put that on your web site… or even on the building itself?! Here we were trying to go out and get some culture in our new city and find the library and we ended up looking like jackasses standing there with stupid, dumbfounded looks on our faces. FAIL. So, we are now the proud owners of two worthless library cards. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was cause I’m out of books that I brought over. We stopped by a book store on the way home and I paid way too much for a book that is so far mediocre at best. Hosed I got.

Since we didn’t kill any time at the library that left us lots of time to kill on the way home. There is a really old section of Sydney called The Rocks so we decided to head up there and see what there was to see. We got there and saw there was a market taking place so we wandered through that. I saw some ok stuff, a lot of garbage and got stressed out by the number people jammed in small area. Maneuvering the stroller through was even more fun. Crowds definitely aren’t my thing…

After escaping the market with little more than an accelerated heart rate we decided we wanted to find a restaurant and have some dinner. Kari decided she wanted a burger so it was off to a place called PJ O’Briens that is supposed to have good burgers. It was probably a 15 minute walk to get there and at that point we discovered the place was really a bar and that doesn’t work so well when you have an almost 2 year old with you. FAIL #2. So, we figured we’d head back towards home and hit up the harbour… certainly there would be something there we could eat, right? 20 minutes later we discovered that assumption was completely wrong. FAIL #3. So, we went home with nothing to show for the entire afternoon except empty stomachs and worthless library cards. Seriously… REFERENCE is a pretty key word New South Wales. Might want to update your information to have that somewhere BEFORE people get in the building. Again… good at letting things go.

Today was Australia Day, which is similar to our 4th of July, so we decided to set out and see what the city had to offer. Either we looked in the wrong places, or the answer to that is not much. We wandered around for a while before we stumbled upon a car show. I enjoyed that immensely. There were a ton of cars I had never seen or heard of, lots that I have heard of but never seen and even some classics from the US as well. A while into my browsing Ethan asked for his binky. Whoops… forgot that at home. Ethan handled this as well as he handles most disappointments and started crying. So, I got him out of the stroller and carried him the rest of the way. That was awesome. After a short while we decided lunch would distract him so we set off to find a place that was open that Ethan would actually eat at. I’ll give you 3 guesses as to where it was. If you guessed McDonalds go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. There Ethan did the normal ketchup and fries very little of anything else.

After that we headed home for nap time. After the nap we decided to check out the harbour and see if there was anything exciting going on down there. Again the answer was not so much. We walked around the entire thing and about the only thing that was different from any other day was the amount of people there. It was ridiculous. I swear people get dumber in large groups and completely forget common sense. PICK A SIDE TO WALK ON AND STICK WITH IT. Is that too much to ask?? Another stressful situation for Joel. During the journey I did see my first morbidly obese person since we got here. It’s nice to know the US doesn’t have a monopoly on that at least… Tonight there were fireworks over the harbour that we could see some of from the apartment. It was raining by the time they started and Ethan was in bed so we couldn’t wander down to see the whole show. But, we got to see some and hear it all.

On to some random Ethan information…

Ethan is all about eating cereal and milk right now. Corn Flakes to be more exact. He has it at almost every meal which is pretty good considering what his meals used to consist of. The only downside is it usually turns into a giant mess cause he gets frustrated with the spoon after a while and uses his hands. Hands and liquid meals don’t mix so our tables always look really nice. At least they’re glass and don’t show any marks…….. Continuing with the food theme… With Ethan’s DVD any time he eats he is more than likely moving around which means we have crumbs from one end of this place to the other. That’s going to keep the vacuum pretty busy while we’re here since dark blue carpet shows every single one. Where’s Homer when you need him??

Ethan loves to help with the keys and pushing the buttons in the elevator. As soon as we leave the apartment he races for the elevator so he can push the buttons and is always the first one to the door even though he can’t reach the keyhole. I have nothing further to add on that topic.

Lastly, Ethan is start to repeat what we say quite a bit now. The one he probably does that most is ‘relax’ cause I must say that to him 75 times a day when he’s having his little conniptions. We really have to monitor what we watch on TV because apparently no matter what time it is during the day every single word is allowed on Australian cable. Today I heard the F-bomb and sh*t within a couple minutes of each other on regular cable and looked at the clock and it was 4:25 PM. Nice. Kari was watching the show Sex and the City yesterday, yes we moved halfway around the world to watch US shows(there is a channel that shows nothing but old US shows), and I couldn’t believe how filthy the language was they were airing in the middle of the day.

I think that’s everything. Work starts tomorrow. Boo! Ethan starts day care tomorrow. Boo! I’ll give you an update on both later this week.

Word to your mother.