G’Day.
I hadn’t used that yet… so why not get it out of the way now… Pretty busy weekend trying to get stuff crossed off the list of things to do and see in the land down under. I’m not sure if I’ve used ‘land down under’ yet either so I guess I can cross two clichés off the list for Australia.
Anyway, Friday after work we got home, ate and then headed out to the park. Ethan was pretty tired so he didn’t do a whole lot of playing. So, we decided to take a walk further south to see the Chinese Gardens and Chinatown. Wouldn’t you know it… as we’re trying to walk out of the park Ethan suddenly gets a burst of energy and decides to use that aforementioned energy to run away from me in the opposite direction we were trying to go. As usual, he thought he was hilarious. We did finally make it to the garden, but it was closed. We could see a little bit through gaps in the wall, and I think its worth a trip back. After that we headed to Chinatown. We didn’t see all of it, but I think we got a pretty good taste of what it had to offer. And that includes the following:
-Lots of crap available for purchase
-Lots of socks… I don’t know why but many stands had cheap socks.
-Incredible array of food and its probably best I don’t know what much of it was
-Going along with the food there were many different smells in the air… some good, some not so much.
-Far too many people in far too small of a space
Anyway, after that we headed home cause it was Ethan’s bed time. Just across the street from the apartment we did get to witness something not offered in Chinatown… a guy whizzing in plain sight while the sun was still shining. Ethan can’t ever say we didn’t try and get him the most experience possible on this adventure.
Saturday e got up and went to Wildlife World. It’s the zoo right next to the aquarium. That was a lot of fun and I think Ethan really enjoyed it as well. I think his favorite animal was the koala. Though, they were all asleep because according to the helpful ‘education staff’ located throughout the zoo they sleep 17-20 hours a day and really only wake up to eat. I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit jealous. There were many different types of animals to see ranging from butterflies, to birds, spiders(many venomous), turtles, crocodiles, insects, koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and of course my favorite… snakes. I hate those things. Just looking at them creeped me out. Thank god none of them were moving. I hate the way they move… its so unnatural to watch. Anyway, we were able to see 3 out of the top 5 most venomous snakes in the world and they’re all indigenous to Australia. That included the top two in the world and they just happened to be right next to each other. The very last thing you get to do there is go inside the butterfly garden… that was pretty cool. I was holding Ethan at the time and one gave us a flyby and came within inches of our faces. Ethan didn’t appreciate that. He was pretty apprehensive throughout the entire place if any animals were close to the glass. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand they can’t get to us.
After the zoo we walked in the rain to McDonalds for lunch and then it was home where Ethan took almost a 4 hour nap. He’s only been sleeping around an hour each day at daycare during nap time. Of course, with the long nap came staying up late. However, I went to the bar with some work people and left Kari back to deal with that.
Sunday I got up and felt fantastic after a late night… the only thing that kept me going that morning was the thought of my upcoming nap that afternoon. Anyway, we got up and decided to head to Bondi Junction to check out the mall and see another area of the city. Included in this trip was Ethan’s first train ride. He really seemed to enjoy it. Once we got to the mall, which was enormous by the way, we headed to Build A Bear Workshop so Ethan could make himself a teddy bear. I’m getting ahead of myself… while Ethan and I were waiting for Kari to get coffee he ran off into the Ralph Lauren store so I chased after him and while we were there I took the opportunity to check out the price of a shirt. Now, this was just a regular golf shirt with the little horsey on it… $170. I immediately started laughing. What a joke… Anyone who would pay that much money for a short sleeve short needs to have their head examined. I don’t care if you’re rich enough to use $100s as TP… it’s the principal behind paying that much for $1.00 in cotton and $.30 of slave labor. AND, on top of all that it was white which for me would last exactly one meal before I spilled on it and then I’d have to cry in public.
Alright… I think I got that rant out of my system. We did finally make it to Build A Bear which from here on out will be called BAB cause that’s a lot less work for me. Ethan selected a kangaroo and we brought it over to the lady and she filled it with stuff and then it was over to the ‘bath’ to clean him. Then you get to buy clothes to put on him before creating a birth certificate. After that Kangaroo(his name) was all ours… and it only cost us $60. $60??!?! Are you $%#!$ kidding me? That was my first thought when the total came up. Kangaroo was lucky Ethan was pretty attached to him at that point or he might have been seeing the BAB orphanage. What a racket they have going at that place…. Maybe $170 for a t-shirt isn’t such a bad deal after all. As we were leaving a birthday party showed up… I couldn’t imagine paying that much for a group of snot nosed kids of which half of them I probably wouldn’t even like.
After that we got lunch and Ethan hammered his way through some popcorn chicken and I hammered my way through the greasiest pile of Chinese food ever and it was glorious. I could actually feel the fat absorbing the remaining alcohol in my system. After that I just needed a nap and all would be good. We did a quick Target run and got Ethan some new crayons and a coloring book and then he threw a temper tantrum in the store and my headache came rushing back. Shortly there after he passed out in the stroller. This was not good… more on that later. After that we bailed and got back on the train so we could get Ethan home for the nap.
Ethan woke up 15 minutes later and that was his nap. I saw my nap evaporating before my eyes and the rest of my day didn’t get any better. Ethan was T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E. the rest of the day. He made last weekend seem like a walk in the park. He threw temper tantrums left and right… did the exact opposite of what you asked and was just generally a pain in the ass. He’s my kid… I can call him that. It got to the point where I didn’t even know what to say to him anymore outside of asking “What is wrong with you?” followed by him either continuing his temper tantrum of laughing at me cause he thought he was being funny. His bed time could not come soon enough and sure enough he passed out as soon as he laid down.
Today Ethan had a really good day at daycare. He’s not using his binky anymore except at naptime and even Koala spends most of the day on the sideline just watching. Today I got there and the teacher said he’s really opening up and using really complex sentences. Her words, not mine. So, that’s nice to know he’s having fun and he’s impressing them with his speech. This morning Kari was reading him a book at the center before she left and a couple other kids came over cause they all really like the book so Kari continued reading and after 3 or so pages Ethan announced ‘The End’ and had Kari quit even though the rest of the kids were into the book. The best part is Ethan really wasn’t even paying attention to Kari reading… he was watching the other kids play but he still wanted her to be done. He should have no problem making friends with that behavior…
Tonight I was sitting with him on the couch and he started singing. At first it was just ‘La la la laaaa la laaa’ in a really high voice. I laughed cause I sing to myself all the time and it drives Kari insane. If there are two of us its going to be really bad for her. Anyway, eventually he started singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and then announced he wanted cake. Apparently one of the other kids today had a birthday so they celebrated. After dinner we went back to the aquarium to kill time. Ethan again had a good time and ran around quite a bit which was fine with me… burn off as much energy as you can so you go to bed.
Recently Ethan started throwing his binky when he gets mad and is in the middle of a temper tantrum. This is a double edged sword… its great cause a lot of times he uses his left arm and he’s definitely got some momentum behind it so he’s keeping that MLB pitching dream alive for me. However, 30 seconds after he throws it and his tantrum is beginning to wind down he remembers he doesn’t have it and he wants it back and then you have to listen to him whine about that. It’s a fun exercise…
Ethan is doing really great with his counting. He counts to 10 perfectly almost every time now. And tonight he said upside down… I didn’t know he even knew that word much less what it actually means. Its really fun watching him learn…
Lastly… I know you all are wondering about Homer… he’s done really well adjusting to his life at Ben, Ellen and Mervin’s. I’m really glad cause I was worried about him when we left but he’s made a really smooth transition. However, this weekend he had a run-in with a skunk at the Smith family farm and he, as expected, came out on the losing end and got to spend the night in the machine shed. They had to bathe him in a mixture of stuff and that seemed to help. For those of you who would like to know more Ben has been kind enough to create a blog for the dogs to help keep us up to date on them…
http://homerandmervin.blogspot.com/
That be it fo now, sucka.
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