Photo

As we all know, timing is the key to good comedy. With that in mind I present to you this shot of our wall planner at home. As you’ll see SWMBO has marked up the major holidays coming up. But wait, there’s something a little amiss. Can you tell what it is? I think my lovely wife needs a new nickname after this miscalculation. Any suggestions?

We bought a Christmas tree yesterday. Doing the good thing we paid hard cash to the local Scout troop for one of their trees. As you can see from the picture it’s a little bit tired, we’re hoping that a few days of love and copious amounts of water will perk it up a bit. Otherwise we are going to have a bit of a droopy Christmas. It’s nice to see though, that the appropriate attire was worn whilst decorating the tree.

I haven’t posted a photo for a while, but I’m making up for it with this corker of the kids. I managed to catch JFGP in a rare moment of rest and HBIB not sleeping, eating or crying. Not one to waste an opportunity I took a photo to prove that they were still and fairly quiet - at least the once.

JFGP is rather taken with the ball pool at Red Rover. He’s taken to climbing up the ramp and jumping in without any sign of fear. I think we may have a fearless adventure junkie on our hands.

Yesterday was an interesting day. It started with a trip to Sydney airport at an extremely early hour and ended in Royal North Shore emergency department. In the mean time we did manage to celebrate the foiling of a fiendish Catholic plot. Sadly my plan to acquire some fireworks came to naught so we had to settle for some quality sparklers. My efforts at creating a bonfire were equally poor and I ended up lighting the barbecue.

It’s not all been hardcore SQL (for me) and wall to wall vomiting (Oliver) at Todd towers in recent weeks. Yesterday, for instance, we were lavishly entertained by the Reeve family at their mansion in North Sydney. After a lunch of finest Ungarie lamb we discussed topics of pith and moment over a glass or two of very fine wine. SWMBO took up my camera and snapped off some lovely photos. Here’s one of the juice and I spending some quality time together. Bless.

We went to the Zoo this morning. Luckily I had my camera with me and managed to squeeze off a couple of shots. This one of JFGP smiling at his Mum is probably the pick of the bunch. The rest are available at my flickr page. Oh and you’ll need to sign in because most of the pictures are reserved for friends and family only.

Today we have mainly been doing chores. The major project of the day was to fix one of the slats in JFGP and “the Juice”’s cubby house. It was looking run down when we moved in, and it’s only taken me ten months to get the materials together to replace it. Sadly I was deficient in the tools department so I had to rope in Ciaran and his drill. With my extensive array of screwdrivers I managed to start removing the board before being called away to tend to small children. When I came back Ciaran had whipped it off and was staring at the spiders in the hole.

We went to the Olympic stadium on Saturday night to watch the Bledisloe Cup match. Australia were very average and the All Blacks showed a little of the spark the displayed against the Lions. Luckily I did take my camera with me and managed to get some half decent shots with my telephoto lens. There are plenty more where this came from, just check out my photos marked with the rugby tag.

JFGP emerging from a tunnel. This was taken at last week’s organised enjoyment session and just goes to show how much fun small people can have at such an event. As a result of continued attendance at these events nothing that rises more than about fifty centimetres from the ground is sacred any more. The boy will climb on anything at any time. If he carries on like this I’ll have to buy him a climbing harness and a hard hat.

We bought Oliver home from the hospital this morning. Everyone is settled in and rather glad to be back, or arrived in one case.

Here’s JFGP this afternoon in the kitchen. I’ve been getting some good pictures with my new lens and a willing subject. I think the credit for this one goes to a small boy though, not least for being very photogenic.

Say hello and welcome to Oliver John Todd. Born at 12:50am on Wednesday the 20th of July, 2005. For the curious he weighed 3.63kg at birth and measured 52cm. In old money that’s 8lbs and about 20 inches. Mother and baby are doing fine, Dad and big brother are memorising the route between home and North Sydney Private by repitition. The current plan is for them to come home on Sunday.

JFGP is pictured here enjoying a scrumptious plate of roast chicken and all of the trimmings, cooked by his Dad. What the photo doesn’t show is that after this mouthful he announced that he was full and got down from the table to go and play with his train set. A small parent/child disagreement ensued.

The weather has been a little wintery in Sydney recently. At the weekend we rugged up JFGP and Elli before heading out to face the elements. Because it can get awfully rough at Warringah Mall. Now who was it who told me that the sun was always shining down under? I’d like a word.

He’s nearly two, but today was JFGP’s first haircut. I took him to Kids Central in Chatswood as they are used to small people fidgeting their way through the whole experience. Apart from a dislike of the cape they made him wear he was as good as gold. He was too busy watching the water wall they have in front of the chair to worry about what the stylist was doing to his head.

Before bed each evening Alexander enjoys some traditional warm milk and, slightly more unconventionally, a few crackers. More importantly I’ve just bought a new lens which is well suited to taking portraits. This is the first of what may be a long and illustrious line. If you’re really lucky I may even include other subjects.

I’ve been taking a photography course at evening school recently. This morning I was out at Dee Why beach learning a few practical lessons. I put some of them to use this afternoon with a couple of shots at Balmoral beach. This shot is taken at the fish shop whilst we were waiting for our lunch to cook. The technically minded will note the almost correct proportions of the shot and the use of fill flash to avoid any shadows on [JFGP](Jumpers For Goal Posts)’s face.

Alex is moving up in the world. Here’s a picture of him relaxing in his newly installed bed. Of course he’s also confused because we haven’t taken the cot down. So now he doesn’t know where to snooze and just thinks that this is a new play couch.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a photo of the day. Not only that, but there hasn’t been one taken by SWMBO. Today I’m addressing both of those deficiences with this shot of the boy wonder taken at Clontarf last weekend. I was standing in the background issuing the usual macho challenge of “Scream if you wan’t to go faster.”