I’ve never been someone who stays quiet about being sick, and to that effect, I’m pretty sure that even big George himself has heard about our run-in with gastro this week. But, if for some reason you haven’t been privy to the tale (and for the sake of posterity, I guess), here’s the lowdown on how our weekend went from bad to worse.

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As 2011 draws to a close, I’ve looked back over what Oscar’s been up to this year and made a few notes here as reminders.

Friends
Oscar’s spent a fair bit of time in the company of his little friends, with at least one play date a week. In addition to the cast of characters that we previously saw regularly, he’s also struck up great friendships with Amelie J, and little Lily who I met at the hospital. Amelie dotes on Oscar and shows amazing maturity and understanding of what he is and isn’t capable of at his tender age. Lily just lights up when she see’s Oscar and is one of the most social babies I’ve ever met!

Unfortunately our Qld Health Mother’s Group never quite got off the ground, so we haven’t spent time with those little people for ages.

Adventures
Oscar’s bigger adventures have obviously been this year’s travel, including his first flight (Melbourne) and his first overseas trip (Fiji). He’s also hit the beach a few times with trips to the Gold Coast, Mudjimba and Kingscliff.

Smaller adventures have included: sleepy bushwalks around Mt Tambourine and Noosa, safely strapped to Daddy’s back; regular riverside walks between New Farm Park and Teneriffe; and a visit to Debbie’s backyard menagerie!

Culture
Oscar’s a big fan of music and continues to bop along whenever he hears music. He’ll often sit beside a musical toy, tap it to make it start, then turn to play with something else. As soon as the music stops, he’ll turn back to restore his backing track. Maybe he thinks he should have theme music?

We’ve seen a few musical performances (Pineapple Productions at Paddington, and Katie Noonan performing Cradle Songs), and watched a puppet show. Surprisingly, the puppets seemed to be the favourite.

Playtime
Oscar loves walking down to the park at the bottom of our street and helpfully points out directions to us, to ensure we don’t miss his favourite destination. Swings and slides are met with squeals of delight, and there’s a new rule that you must sit on the adult swing beside him, rather than stand and push him. Walks about the neighbourhood are good fun, provided we go by the dog park and see who’s playing.

Reading is a favourite pasttime, especially Dig Dig Digging (thanks Meegan!). Oscar loves to turn the pages, point out clocks and things in the background, and make hand gestures and try words to “read along”, eg. the crane goes “up up up” as do Oscar’s little hands. Visits to the library are great and Oscar’s starting to help me pick out books rather than just play with the toys there.

Activities
Kids activities are expensive. Super expensive. So we’ve tried to strike a balance of free, discounted and paid activities. He’s loving his swimming lessons and so far they’ve made family beach holidays lots more fun, knowing that he’ll be keen at any time of day to jump in the pool.

Gymboree seems a bit overpriced, but I’m hoping that the padded flooring and equipment will encourage him to be a bit more daring (he’s a cautious soul!).

And indoor play centres are a fun rainy day play date, especially if you have a two for one coupon to the Strathpine centre.

Other than swimming, our most frequent activity has been free library Rhyme Time which was fun for Oscar and a great help to me in remembering some nursery rhyme lyrics! I’ll be keen to see what Toddler Time is like, now that he’s graduated to the next age group.

It’s hard to find activities that are aimed at this age group, but I keep reading about things that are fun to do with slightly older kids. Next year I’m hoping to join a playgroup (it’s been difficult to fit these morning sessions around his sleep time), and head on out for some more new experiences. Model boats and kite flying anyone?

One of Oscar’s birthday presents this year was an inflatable yellow pool, sporting a huge giraffe at the back and a bunch of decorative blow up hanging things for him to rip off and inevitable lose. Kristy managed to pick it for an absolute steal, and up until now it’s functioned brilliantly as a safe-haven from fleas in the downstairs playroom. But, with temperatures cracking whatever number it was that they cracked today, it was officially “hot enough” for the little yellow pool to fulfill its water-based destiny!

As you can see, Oscar was rather chuffed with the whole event, and quite enjoyed his little splash about!

Unlike the fleas, having worms is a good thing. In fact, it’s a great thing! Truth be told, I can’t think about worms without also thinking about Red Dwarf, when The Cat is trying to comfort Rimmer on the death of his father. “Sure, it’s bad news for him, but on the other hand – it’s party time for all the little worms!”.

*ahem*

Anyway – as previously mentioned, our anniversary gifts to each other this year was stuff for around the house, and to this effect, Kristy bought me a worm farm!

Wow, that’s a lot of little pets! I contemplated naming them all for the briefest of moments, however given how long it took for us to decide on “Oscar”, it’s probably for the best that they all just respond to “Little Wormy”.

And so, Little Wormy and his 999 best mates will from now on be helping us with composting. And helping us with composting will inevitably help us with our gardening. And helping us with gardening obviously leads into helping us growing food (mainly in the form of herbs); and that in turn leads to helping us with eating. And I like eating.

So far our Little Wormys seem to be enjoying their new home; now we just have to see if our garden will enjoy the benefits of their handywork!

This year, Kristy and I decided that since our anniversary (7 years!) is so close to both of our birthdays, we’d get each other a present for “around the house”. No, I don’t understand the logic there either, but I’m sure I was on to something when I came up with it.

So, come October 30th, and Kristy becomes the proud owner of a brand new toaster. Yes, I gave my wife a toaster for our anniversary. She loves bread! And, it’s not just any toaster, but a fancy pants, shiny silver one, which boasts such features as an “A Bit More” button (to add a bit more time to the toasting cycle), and “Lift ‘n’ Look” (to see how things are progressing without interrupting the toasting cycle). In fact, the “Lift ‘n’ Look” feature is so revolutionary that Breville listed it on the toaster’s Tech Specs page twice! Even Breville themselves stand behind this toaster so much that they included the word “hero” in the filename of the photo which I have shamelessly pilfered without permission for my own use here!

By now, it’s inevitable that you’re burning with desire to ask the obvious question: “How does this fancy pants new toaster perform?” Well, sadly, the answer is we still don’t know! See, I ordered it from Billy Guyatts, a self-claimed online electrical superstore. I wasn’t impressed with how long the toaster took to arrive; in fact, it was positively hopeless! Over a week! How much of this is the fault of Billy Guyatts versus Australia Post I don’t know, though I suspect that order status moving from “paid” to “dispatched” was somewhat short of instantaneous.

However, that’s not my main complaint; no, far from it. Unfortunately, someone in the Billy Guyatts warehouse was having a serious case of dyslexia when they were picking my order, because instead of sending us the BTA430, they sent us the lower model (and “A Bit More” button-free) BTA340! Yes, I appreciate that both models are made up from the same letters and numbers, but that does not mean they are the same toaster!

OK, so I’m human, and I can accept that people make mistakes, so I sent Billy Guyatts an enquiry asking how they were going to remedy the situation. Suffice to say, I was underwhelmed with their response:

Hi, we apologize, we will send you a post return label through email, you need to print this label off and stick it to the item.

Then take the item to your local post office. Once we receive the item back we will then send out the replacement.

My two main problems with this are:

1. The toaster that they mistakenly sent retails at around $30, which means they probably buy it for somewhere between $10 and $20. Postage is about $10.50 each way. Surely you’d write the toaster off and send out the correct product?
2. At the very least, I would have expected them to send out the correct toaster immediately, rather than waiting for me to return the incorrect one. Yes, I can see that that puts them “at risk” of me not returning the incorrect toaster – but see my previous point for my feelings on that particular matter.

I wrote them a reply to this effect, and thus far have not received another response. Neither have we received the correct toaster yet. We are underimpressed! And our bread is undercooked! Billy Guyatts, you’ve got some learning to do!

PS: Happy Anniversary, wife!

We came home from Kingscliff to the very unpleasant realisation that our house was infested with fleas. Yuk. Even thinking about it makes the skin on my legs start to itch. Mom and Dad had warned us that they found the dogs covered in fleas (for the first time in their lives!) after taking them back off our hands, and so clearly the blame is on us; though I don’t know what we did wrong – we followed their regular routine to the letter!

At first, the problem at our house seemed to be localised to the laundry, though we found a few in the playroom not far from the laundry door, which meant they were migrating. Worse, the playroom floor is carpeted (as opposed to tiles in the laundry), which makes them harder to get rid of (as they burrow down into the carpet to lay their eggs). We set a couple of Mortein Flea Bombs off in the playroom which certainly seemed to help the problem, but the fleas were still hanging around (loads of them outside), and worse still, seemed to be migrating upstairs!

As luck would have it though, we were due for our annual pest control treatment, so we called our friendly Pest Control company, and had Anthony come out to spray both inside and outside the house. Apparently, to have maximum effect, we now need to stomp around every room of the house for the next three weeks, which will encourage the fleas to come out of hiding and for the eggs to hatch! The residual effect of the spray will then kill off any fleas that hit the floor. Suckers!

Of all the pointless creatures in the world, fleas have now taken my number one spot for most hated. I can’t wait for this whole episode to be behind us!

Over the weekend, we felt extremely privileged to witness two of the world’s most beautiful people – Mel and Ben – get married at St Agatha’s church at Clayfield.

This was the first wedding that I’ve been to which included a sign-language interpreter for hearing impaired members of the audience, and I have to say that watching them work is absolutely fascinating. You can’t help but smile in awe at how well they can express not only the words being spoken, but even some of the subtle context and meanings that go along with it. It’s amazing! I immediately wanted to hire the girls for all of my future meetings; not that I’ve ever worked with anyone who is hearing impaired before, but they’d just make meetings so much more enjoyable!

The reception was held at Baguette at Clayfield, right down at the racecourse end of Racecourse Road. Since the reception started at the close of Race Day, the streets were filled with well dressed patrons coming out of Eagle Farm. A couple of them even gate-crashed the reception (simply to use the facilities!), and the staff were very quick to boot them out as soon as they were discovered!

My favourite part of the reception (besides more live interpreting for the speeches, that is) was definitely Mel and Ben’s bridal waltz. They put together a very fun routine which the performed admirably for everyone, and which even included some signs (for the deaf), and a big butt wiggle at the end! It was a joy to behold, and a perfect reflection on their characters.

Mel and Ben bring such joy and warmth to everyone that they know, and I couldn’t be happier for them to be married. Here’s wishing them both a lifetime of absolute delight together!

More photos in the Mel and Ben’s Wedding gallery, or also on facebook.

Since both Sibylle and my birthdays are in October, a German influenced celebration was surely going to be on the cards! This should have been obvious by the fact that Sibylle is Austrian (which is almost German, though she’d probably argue that Germans are almost Austrian), and by the fact that I love me some German food!

And so, on the day after my birthday, we all joined Karl and Sibylle and their two little munchkins at The Brisbane German Club, opposite the Gabba. We were all quite encouraged by the rather authentic looking menu, though there were a few little influences that sounded distinctly Australian. Still, if someone offers me a menu with pork knuckle on it, then you’d better believe I’m going to be ordering the pork knuckle (although I almost ordered the lamb shanks, because if someone offers me a menu with lamb shanks on it, then you’d better believe I’m going to be ordering the lamb shanks; but I didn’t think I could get through two main meals). Sometime later, here’s what was served to me:

A hearty feast, indeed! But I’d be lying if I said it was the best pork knuckle I’d ever had. Basically, I wasn’t too impressed by the layer of crackling around the outside – I wanted something big and meaty, not something big and meaty wrapped in a layer of fat! Still, the gravy and potatoes were delicious, and the other patrons seemed satisfied with their meals, so I’ve no-one to blame for my poor choice but myself. Why oh why didn’t I stick with the lamb shanks?! Clearly another visit is in order!

We spent all of last week chilling out with Jason, Louise and Adam (who drove up all the way from Sydney!) at Mantra, Kingscliff. We only had one goal for the holiday: relax! And that’s pretty easy to achieve with some great friends, a beachside setting, and some beautiful weather. Truth be told, it was grey skies and rainy for the first few days, but the sun came out on Tuesday afternoon and then stayed for the rest of the week! And all that sunshine and blue sky made for a wonderful outlook from our little balcony!

Our days were filled with the usual hectic routines of a beachside holiday; preparing/eating food, swimming in the pools, playing tennis, and obviously – trips to the beach. Unfortunately, being November, we weren’t the only ones getting a jump on the Christmas Holiday rush, so finding a decent spot was always a bit of a wrestle with the other beach-goers. We were thankful for our time in both New York and London, which taught us invaluable skills for finding space amongst the crowds.

This was Oscar’s first real beach holiday, or at least, the first one where he was old enough to have a proper play in the sand. He absolutely loved it when we’d dig a hole in the sand, which he would inevitably shuffle his way over to, and then fall in. Once stuck, he’s then start whinge-crying until we lifted him back out again, only to repeat the whole process over-and-over until the hole was so full that it was no longer a hole. Ahh, the things that amuse you when you’re young.

Overall, Oscar was a huge fan of the beach, and there were always tears when it was time to pack up and leave. Similarly for the water – be it the ocean, the pool, or even the bath for that matter! Each time we passed a body of water, he would excitedly start pointing and making noises as if to say, “There! There! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?!”.

On Tuesday, we made our way down to Byron Bay, where we took a trip up to the lighthouse, and then ate lunch at the beach below. I can’t remember the last time I was in Byron Bay proper, but I found it absolutely beautiful! Truly one of the nicest beaches that I’ve seen for a long time, and with brilliant surf! I was disappointed I didn’t take my board!

The view from the lighthouse was also quite spectacular, and Kristy, Louise and Jason even saw a whale just off the coast, while poor little baby Adam slept through the whole thing in the car!

All too soon it was Saturday, and time to head back home. We farewelled Jason, Louise and Adam as they made their long journey back to Sydney, and then departed for sunny Brisbane. Ahh, holidays, why can’t you be longer?

Check out more photos in the Kingscliff Holiday photo album.

Paul recently sent me an email to the effect of the following:

I noticed your latest post in Google Reader tonight and it seems to have a title with an odd spammy pharmaceuticals reference! At first I thought it might be a joke but then looking back in the history it seems to have been that way since your Sep 19 post.

Sure enough when I checked it out for myself, my website had been hacked! And by such a weird hack too – seemingly all the content was left untouched, but the title of some posts (when viewed through google) had some cheap pharmaceutical advertising in its place. Even more weirdly, clicking the link in google still correctly sent you to the story, and not to some dodgy online fake chemist. So, what’s the point, hackers?

Anyway, cleaning the infection out was no easy task – Paul also managed to find this link which did a great job of telling me what to do. I’ve also gone through and updated every password that I could find, so hopefully that will keep the hackers at bay for a little while longer.

Stupid hackers! Go and do something productive with your lives!