spike in leaves

spike in leaves, originally uploaded by Kelly and Jim.

st michaels mount

st michaels mount, originally uploaded by Kelly and Jim.

Greece

There are to be some quite sizeable additions to the blog in due course (once the machinery stops crashing whilst uploading snaps.)

In the meantime, three pics from Greece got through to get you started ... as you can see, the little nugget has grown enough of a fatsuit to handle the ocean water, and was loving it by the time we left. Splash Fatboy Splash!

Blakedown

A long awaited reunion for Jim and his parents. Mary and Ken meet their Grandson for the first time. It was a long journey of about 30 hours but we had a warm welcome . Spike seems very happy with his British relatives and was ready for lots of cuddles. A man on our plane commented that Spike will have a good career ahead as an opera singer and commended him on his powerful voice box.
Peace baby. Hippy child Spike Montgomery Dodd spreading the love.

Spike having a fantastic day in Mary and Ken's garden. He couldnt take his eyes off his entertaining cousin Jack. I cannot believe how green the grass is. It feels so soft and spongy, like carpet. We saw a woodpecker in the garden, but I am still waiting to catch a glimpse of the mole. I am hoping to see a hedgehog. Did you know that a baby hedgehog is called a spikelet? How sweet. I think I must have given birth to one of those!

Yes it's poking through. About 2 days after arriving in England, Spike's first tooth has emerged. No wonder he was so upset on the plane. I thought he hadn't been sleeping well on account of the long daylight hours in the English summer. But the poor little child must have been suffering. So now he has the appropriate equipment, we might take him down the pub for a T-bone.

Brunswick

Outside the flat in the lovely Brunswick Heads. When Spike is smiling... I am smiling.Happy family on the beautiful Brunswick beach at sunset.

Spike child

He seems to have been growing a fair bit since we last blinked. As a result he's now looking like this...



Down by the river, Tracey manages to get his biggest smile ever recorded on camera!



and the full extent of that shot in the pub, now clearly dwarfing the beer!



Here's a couple of photos from a month or so back. With the lovely Mali and then soundly asleep in his basinet.





Bath or shower time is always a winner. First he became obsessed with his hands...


Now it is his feet...


Shape of things to come???



But before all of that, he has to get used to the cold salty water. I say cold, though it's 23 degrees here in Northern NSW, so it's hardly cold for a wanna be surfer like his Dad, but it's also a fairly different experience to the 30+ degrees of the bath.

After a couple of false starts, here he is clearly enjoying himself (well he is not crying) up to his waist in the calm water of the river. Whilst he started the experience with a few sharp intakes of breath he soon forgot about the temperature as he became fascinated with splashing, an activity he seems to take very seriously!


But the good times don't last forever, and the tears come back. On this occasion, Kelly's mother Valerie came to the rescue, while we popped back in the ocean for a rare swim together!

Change of scenery

Well time certainly flies and it seems that we have been living in Sydney for ages now... (9 years for Jimmy and 7 years for Kelly in her most recent stint.) So that seems like enough of a reason for a change as anything else. So we did!

Packing up was a mamouth job as usual. Not aided much by my desire to sell off anything and everything that I hadn't used in the last tweleve months. Still, that's all done now, and I have a ebay feedback rating of 42 as a result!

And this is what the flat looked like on the eve of our departure...


And this is the life we swapped it for! Three cheers for Brunswick Heads!!

Little gold dude

It is interesting that more significant career events have happened to me whilst not working than ever happened while working. Good old George was happy to come back to animal for an afternooon and pass around the little gold dude they call Oscar. It seems you get a golden handshake after only 3 and a half years these days.

Christmas 2006

It didn't occur to me until my Dad mentioned it last night that I haven't shared many pictures of Spike since he was born. Sorry about that! I guess that's just because I've been too busy spending time in his pleasurable company. Also, I haven't actually been taking that many photos of him (which is a complete amazement to those that are familiar with my happy snapping) but this is only at the expense of tonnes of video. He's such a wriggly little chap that a mere still image cannot contain him!

Some of that video I may share later, but for now, here's some of those snaps...

Passport photos

Today we had a mission trying to get a photo of Spike that they would accept for his passport. The criteria was for his face to be looking straight at camera, not at an angle, with both eyes open, mouth closed and being able to see an equal amount of each ear. Needless to say, this was a near impossible task that took 100 photos to get right. All of the pics below failed the test.





This one, however, they accepted...