For the last goodness-knows-how-many weeks, Moreton Bay council has been redeveloping the play area in Lionel Burton Park, which is just at the bottom of our hill. Finally this week all the fences came down and it’s once again open for terrorising by the neighbourhood kids!

There’s a little cut-through path that goes from our street to the back of the park, and weirdly, the council decided to lay fresh grass from the path to the play equipment. I guess it will eventually take and become one with the rest of the grass, but at the moment it just looks like a very oddly coloured grass carpet!

Anyway – the new play equipment is lovely! I can see us spending many hours down there playing with the wee ones. We gave Oscar a push on the swings – he’s definitely a bit more balanced than he was on his first attempt, but he’s still a bit top heavy, and tends to lean backwards a little bit too much. But, he seems to enjoy it none-the-less!

Swings however are nothing in comparison to the slippy-slide! He’s still a bit little to stop himself from falling backwards and banging his head (or at least, we think he is; we’re not quite ready to risk it just yet!) – but I don’t think he’s far off!

Yeah, go little man!

Check out some more photos in the Fun at the park gallery!

Ah, it’s funny to see what kids find funny. It’s even funnier to laugh at what kids find funny. Especially when their laugh is as cute as this one.

Admit it – you’d laugh too if someone kept putting a little purple hat on your head. Actually you probably wouldn’t. I’m glad Oscar does.

The combination of Sunday’s gorgeous weather, plus my desire to obtain another Hard Rock Cafe pilsner glass for work (after mine was broken by the cleaners), made for a perfect excuse to head to the coast on Sunday.

We stopped off at Al and Suz’s place for morning tea on our way through. We also got to meet Al’s Mum who is out for a four week visit from Scotland!

Shortly after, we hit Surfer’s Paradise – oh my, how long has it been since I was there? Much has developed, and yet at the same time, nothing has changed. The food at the HRC was up to it’s usual standard – I can highly recommend both the pulled pork and beef brisket sandwiches – they’re awesome!

We strolled down the mall to the beach to check out the Surfer’s Paradise festival, however there wasn’t too much happening – in fact, most of the stalls had already packed up and gone home for the day. Still, Oscar seemed to enjoy our stroll along the boardwalk, and a happy little man makes for happy parents!

Wow, we’ve fallen behind with the blog! Oscar hit the nine month mark last Thursday!

We missed out on his eight month photo with Raggy because we were in Fiji, and there’s been loads of developments since month seven! Oscar now has six teeth – four on top, two down the bottom. And that’s not all that’s new – he’s also learned some sweet new skills! About two weeks ago, he spontaneously started clapping, whilst he was standing on Poppi’s lap. Better yet – this skill also translates to giving high fives! Possibly the most important life skill already conquered before his one-year birthday. Nice!

Oh and about five minutes after his first bout of clapping, he waved goodnight to everyone! (Yes, waving is a new skill. Yes, waving counts as a skill.)

He’s also become rather a chatty little man – an early indication that he’s definitely his mother’s son. For the most part it’s babble, but he’s pretty good at “Mummum” and “Daddad”, as well as “Bubbub”. One morning, Kristy passed him over to me and I said to him, “Hello Oscar!”, to which he very clearly replied, “Hi Dad”. Now, I realise it was just a random string of noises that coincidentally sounded like the right thing to say, but both Kristy and I heard it, and for a moment we were both stunned! Logically, we then repeated “Hello Oscar!” to him over and over again, in the hopes for a repeat performance, but he just smiled at us like we were loonies. If I could have read his thoughts, I’ve no doubt he was thinking, “Why do they keep saying hello to me? People are weird; better just keep on smiling at them.”.

Ahh, what a little champ.

When Oscar came home from hospital, we planted a lime tree for him in the backyard. It was an optimistic project, given our complete lack of competence to grow anything. As such, we cheated a little bit – instead of starting with a seed, we started with a small, established plant. Also working against us is the fact that the soil in our backyard isn’t great – actually, it’s mostly clay – so we used some gypsum to help break it up, and we’ve mixed in loads of compost to try and enrich it a bit, and to keep in the moisture.

So far, it’s going ok – the tree is still alive, though its lost all of its leaves now that winter is approaching. It also managed to get a disease of some sort, which we’re treating with white oil.

But, with everything working against it, our little tree has still managed to produce one small lime! We’re hoping it’s not a case of “the first and the last”, but just in case it is, at least we’ve got evidence that we had a very minor amount of success!

Not much going on this week, after our second long weekend of just chillin’. I have to say, I could easily get used to working less than five days a week, and I dare say it will be a rude shock to have to go to work on a Monday! Hopefully I’ll find it novel, though I’m guessing I probably won’t.

Anyway – after a lovely breakfast with the Dahl’s on Monday morning just gone, we rounded out our long weekend with some boules with the Threebie’s in the afternoon. Ted was eager for a push on the swings, so we decided to jump on the bandwagon and give Oscar his first ever swing.

I can’t say that he loved it, though he didn’t really hate it, either. His weight didn’t seem to distribute properly – he seemed a bit top-heavy, which caused him to tip backwards quite a lot. This is more than likely from his enormously advanced and therefore heavy brain, which will no doubt be beneficial to him later in life; but isn’t really ideal for a Monday afternoon on the swings.

Seven has always been a favourite number of mine, which I think is the same story for most people. However, contrary to most people who seem to say, “It’s just such a great number” or something equally lame, I actually have a basis for it being my favourite! “G” is the seventh letter of the alphabet! Yes, my reason is also pretty lame, but what better one have you got?

*ahem*

Oscar hit the seven month mark over the Easter weekend!

In comparison to his six month photo, he doesn’t appear to have grown up all that much this month, but he definitely looks a bit stockier. This is actually really great news for us, since he’s never been much of a fan of eating – in the liquid form that is; solids definitely pique his interest a bit more.

Actually, since our Melbourne trip, he’s gone right off most of his solid foods too – though he’s happy to eat banana porridge until the cows come home. To make it a bit more nutritious, and to ensure he’s still eating some vegetables Kristy tries to sneak various add-in’s into it, which for the most part is successful… but she got totally busted a few days ago when she attempted to infuse some peas. I let him off the hook for that one though; Daddy doesn’t like peas, either.

By far though, Oscar’s best new trick this month is sitting! I was almost worried that he’d never sit, as every time we tried to get him sit him up, he’d push backwards in an attempt to stand instead. But lo and behold, one day, out of nowhere, he pulled out a perfect sit, and stayed that way happily for quite some time. Bam!

Ah, so studious!

Oscar is quite a social baby, but by far his best friend is a little person who looks an awful lot like his twin brother. We call him, “Mirror Baby”, and Oscar is always ludicrously excited to see him.

Blah blah blah, ridiculously good looking; yes, I know. Oscar is pretty cute too, don’t you think?

Anyway, until Kristy introduced me to mirror baby, I had been wondering why on earth our bedroom mirrors had so many tiny little finger smudges all over them; especially given that they were at hard-to-reach-for-a-baby type of heights.

Now I know.

It’s the 23rd of March already – boy this year is flying by! Of course that means that it’s Oscar’s monthly birthday, and today he reached the ripe old age of six months!

It’s getting harder and harder to take the monthly photograph of him now, because the little wriggler just doesn’t want to stay still! Even just trying to hang on to him is an effort now, as he’s always trying to launch out of our arms to grab on to something! And to top it all off: his favourite trick this month is jumping! If you’re sitting down and holding on to him, you instantly become his own personal Jolly Jumper (or sometimes his “Grumpy Jumper” depending on his mood).

On the diet front, we’ve started introducing more solid foods – some of which he likes (yay, pumpkin!), some, not so much (boo, potato!).

But by far, the best progress he’s made this month is on the sleeping front, which Kristy and I are both very thankful for! His naps during the day now routinely hit 1.5 hours (sometimes more!), where he used to struggle to hit 40 minutes. This also means he’s much happier during awake times, which means we’re getting way more smiles and laughs!

Ah, the joy of parenthood!

We’ve been trying out a new sleep routine with Oscar, to help move him toward the “sleeping through the night” goalpost, rather than the “waking up is awesome” end of the field that he was hanging around at. There’s been a few total disasters along the way, but overall it seems to be working quite well; not only is he sleeping much more solidly through the night, but he’s even napping better through the daytime. Win win!

On a completely unrelated note (well not entirely unrelated; it’s still about Oscar)… lately, he’s been reaching for pretty much everything that’s near him. Usually we can keep him just far enough away that his reaching is unsuccessful, which he finds very frustrating, but I find hilarious. From an outsider’s perspective, it looks an awful lot like he’s trying to channel the force:

And suddenly, I find myself wanting to buy a Volkswagon Passat…