Melbourne weather is really perfect right now - sunny and 27 and just the right amount of windy for our local kite festival. I am now worn out from all the walking and Jake is asleep but it is great to live somewhere that has festivals, fetes and carnivals on all the time. There is always something to do and see. Happy Sunday people!
Ok so we don't hang out in internationally fancy areas like harajuku and omotesando anymore, but we love our new multicultural home, Melbourne. One of our favourite places to visit is Victoria street. Yes it is a little dirty, crowded and the train station is pretty rank but we love the food and it feels great to be part of such a vibrant culture.
Jake loves getting a custard bun. We love eating BBQ pork buns and Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches - yummo!
Not really sure what is going to happen with this blog. I have ridiculously little time to keep it up-to-date but it seems so sad to just stop....so we'll see. In lieu of words here are some recent photos from our world. Yay summer...except for that one 44 degree day (but I'd rather not talk about that)
Happy 2nd Birthday Jake! You turned two last Wednesday. It seems remiss of me that I haven't written about your many achievements since you turned 17 months old. The past seven months have been pretty tumultuous for us all, but I think the light at the end of our tunnel is very, very bright.
I think it is impossible for me to list all of the changes we have seen in you over the past seven months but I am going to try and write about as many as possible because one day you may love to read about what you were doing when you were two well one technically. Oh and just in case you want to know, if you were a girl I really wanted to call you Stevie. Not sure why but the name really appealed to me at the time.
18 MONTHS
Not only has your hair grown since this photo was taken, but you have become much better at listening and controlling your urges to run all over the place to explore every nook and cranny. You definitely still do that, but we can also enjoy sitting down to lunch together because you enjoy the 'adult' experience. I don't know when it happened but you started to self feed around this time. I think the addition of a table and chairs to our life and a nightly sit down at dinner really helped in that department, but it is truly amazing how you picked up these skills because we certainly didn't formally practice them.
Your love of drawing (known as baba to you) also really took off around this time too. You hold your pencil perfectly (something that even I cannot do) and we often spend the whole of dinner drawing. We have two whole scrapbooks that we will keep of your drawing from this time. Your most often requested thing to draw is of course a dump truck with rocks in the back but sometimes your dad adds a lizard or a snake much to your delight. Speaking of lizards you love to do lizard wrestling with your dad and even today after your bath you were determined to crawl around on your knees hissing like a lizard which made me hiss like a lizard too.
19 MONTHS
This photo was taken the day before your dad's birthday so you are technically around 19.5 months here. You are adding the final touches to your dad's birthday card. When you were 19 months old we officially moved to Melbourne from Brisbane. You did great on numerous flights back and forth until we finally found an apartment. Thank goodness for the ergo - I could just strap you on my back and board the plane knowing that you were safe. The next few months involved a lot of boxes and computers stacked on top of boxes as entertainment units and airbeds as sofas, but we managed to finally buy some furniture and put together a cosy little home for us. It was also winter here in Melbourne and luckily we discovered it wasn't nearly as cold as Tokyo. We had fun in that first month discovering all of our local parks. Wow even looking back on photos from about four months ago I see how far you have come. Of course we still get our fair share of tantrums, but you can last a lot longer now without completely melting down. Your nap has also moved from around midday to 1pm which gives us a nice long morning to play or go somewhere fun like the Melbourne Museum, the Melbourne Zoo or the Collingwood Children's Farm - all of which we are now members!!!
So Jake, you may think your mother is very organized considering this long post about you...but the problem is that I am now writing this in January 2010. It has taken me three months to get around to finishing it. At the end of October after your second birthday, I started working full-time and you started daycare four days a week. It has been a challenge for us all to adapt to this new schedule and we are all still learning. BTW you are doing amazingly well at kindy and your language has really taken off. Um BTW - who knew you could count to twelve??!! And you know all of your favourite books off by heart and recently you've come to watch a lot of Dora....I walked into the room the other morning and I heard you say 'soy Dora'. Anyway my sweets, it is 1:22am and your mother has rarely been up at this hour for a few months now and I had better go to bed. I am really, really loving two year old Jake - you are hilarious and so much fun to hang out with.
Below are some photos from your birthday - there were bubbles and frogs and cake and lego and all those good things. You are the best!!
heart mama ooxx
My mind is so confused. For the past six or seven years I have been living in the Northern Hemisphere which means that September is a month of cooler weather and more importantly - exciting new knitting patterns and the urge to knit re-emerges.
However now we live in the Southern Hemisphere and it is getting warmer. Don't get me wrong I am definitely not complaining and this way I can still enjoy all the knitting excitement the NH has to offer in the Spring sunshine of the SH.
I've been knitting quite a bit, but I can't seem to finish anything except for a pair of socks for Jake (see sleeping pic below), which he will finally wear and everytime we put them on - he says 'mama' because he knows I made them for him - cute!! I've cast on for the Vine Yoke Cardigan, the Mountain View cardigan and in a moment of madness (or excitement) I also cast on for a Japanese vest pattern that I've wanted to knit for ages. I have very little to show though for all that activity.
I am sure you need no motivation to get knitting (thanks ravelry) but if you do check out the new Petite Purls - that girls cheerleading skirt is the cutest. I don't know how Brandy does it with a newborn AND an toddler!!
And there are a couple of new Japanese knitting books that look super cute - thanks to the amazing internet I can browse through them just as if I was in Kichijoji Yuzawaya (sigh - I miss you).
Click here to browse the book!!
Click here to browse the above book!
I feel remiss that I have not written a Jake update is so long...I would do it now but I think I'll save it for his SECOND birthday next month - two years old already - that's ridiculous!! He's very much a two year old now - I can tell by how often he says no and by the force with which he says it!!
Here he is with the t-shirt Darin designed for Threadless as the background
for reals this time. I mean it.
After a very long hiatus of knitting for myself I am casting on for Ysolda's Vine Yoke Cardigan in the new Fall Twist Collective. I'm serious. I mean it. How cute is this cardigan and I particularly love Ysolda's description of the pattern:
Reasonably mindless, with just enough lace and short rows to be interesting, it’s ideal to pick up and put down, simple enough to knit at the end of a tiring day, perfect to fit into busy life. The end result is flattering and easy to wear and should fit just as naturally into your life and wardrobe.
Last week Jake and I went to my hometown of Brisbane for a surprise visit or should I say last minute visit - it is a two hour flight from Melbourne which makes it much closer than when we were in Tokyo. Brisbane is sub-tropical and even though the Melbourne winter hasn't been nearly as cold as I expected, it is still much colder than Brisbane. It does get cold in the morning and at night but it is usually over 20 during the day - and did I mention how sunny it is there?? The sun truly blinded me as we got off the plane!! The quality/brightness of sunshine there is brilliant.
The main reason for our visit was to celebrate my nephew's 10th birthday. It is so cliched to say it, but I remember when he was Jake's age and we played with the torch under the blanket together....he is still as sweet as ever {most of the time :)} but now life is about his rigorous sport schedule, video games. lego and tech decks (baby skateboards).
This delicious icecream cake was made by my older brother!!
The cooking talent in my family doesn't end there - my sister also made about a million different cupcakes for three different birthday events.
Jake and the other toddlers present enjoyed them very much!!
And the cooking talent doesn't end there - my dad also whipped up his famous strawberry flans - I was VERY excited. It has been many years since I had one of these.
Jake got in some good bonding time with everyone. Here he is with my dad.
And with his cousin Jack - the birthday boy (sporting his brand new converse sneakers!!)
Happy Birthday Jack!!
Wow has it really been nearly three months since my last post. Not surprising really since we've been in a bit of a state of flux and we only got settled with reliable internet less than two months ago. We are slowly but surely finding our feet in our new home of Melbourne and lucky for us we had a few friends here already and especially lucky for me, I had a couple of great crafty internet friends that I couldn't wait to meet.
One of them recently held a mending bee at her lovely home and I was lucky enough to attend. I took along six garments that needed some form of repair and came home four or five hours later with six repaired items - it didn't take four hours to repair them but if you add in talking and eating it all adds up. What a great day! Thanks so much for hosting Erin and letting us play in your craft room!!
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