The House Of Hot Kettles

And I forgot...

I haven't been very good at tracking Arlo's Moments lately.  So, here are some:

*He loves men.  I think this is because Mark has been away for very nearly three weeks and none of me is Dadda, so now Arlo smiles like a little lost boy come home when he sees random men in the street.

*He says dog quite a bit, for any animal, but today he said cat.  Sometimes he says tickle and gentle, but the usualy sound is dookoodookoodookoo (which came from him mimicing me saying tickle)

*On Tuesday he suddenly became very confident about cruising the furniture; previously he was slow and tentative.  Now he's determined.  He also, on the same day, was happy to take steps while only holding onto me with one hand.  Usually he won't budge unless we both have two hands involved.

*Yesterday he actively played peekaboo with me - when I said "Where's Arlo?" he held the scarf over his face and then dropped it when I said "There he is!".  I won't say it was perfect - the scarf, all bunched up in his dimpled fist, probably only convered half of one eye, but oh it was sweet.

*Yesterday he suddenly realised that the baby in my computer [i.e. the desktop picture] is him.  And boy oh boy, does he like looking at himself.  He sure knows a handsome, amusing baby when he sees one!  He was also quite happy with the photos of him and Mark that I showed him.

*Other stuff I can't think of!  Yay!

Hoooooooj baby

Arlo's littlest cousin, Owen , was born a whopping 4.5kgs/9lb14oz on Monday evening, in the midst of floods and drama galore.  He managed to fracture his arm on the way out, poor little munchkin, which makes for some odd photos of a one-armed baby (it stays tucked inside his singlet until it heals, apparently in just 10 days or so).  He's delicious with the cutest little nose you've ever seen.

And it stunned me a little to realise that that's a whole 1.5kgs/3lbs-ish heavier than Arlo was at birth, and 2kgs heavier than he was at discharge.  Eeek.  I thought Owen felt a lot heavier than I remembered Arlo being, if that sentence made any sense whatsoever.

Arlo finds him fascinating, but he finds the smell of his Aunty Leighsa's milk more so - yesterday he went straight to her and started giving all his usual 'feed me, feed me' signals (with the oh so gentlemanly addition of two hands reached out in front).  Obviously I'm not irreplaceable.

Tomorrow dadda comes home!  Finally!  And I will take him to see the wee boat and then I can stop, it's been four times already this week, and as my mother-in-law said today - I've got the ships, I have a shipload of photos already, I'm up to my neck in ship, ship happens etc etc.  For someone who doesn't swear, she sure knows all the right phrases ;-).

Hey, by the way, if you're reading this Aunty Mary - we miss you!  Come home soon!  We hope Mark gets some work so we can come and visit you and eat sashimi together.  Maybe even in the snow...

More Shipping News

A little boat! Or, the prettiest coal-loading dock in the world:

Us + boat

Flooded river:

Ship of Fools

Some photos:

the beach, the day before the ship ran aground:

View of the storm from a beach or two south:

Brolly

Spectators:

More later as typepad is having a cow and I can't load the pics.

glub glub glub

so after last night's post we had to go help rescue a woman whose house was under a couple of inches of water - the level had risen considerably since I'd been out for fuel and when we went outside we found the street knee-deep in water.  Freezing water.  So we drove to Michelle's house and moved boxes, sentimental things, and then I had to wade home to get the trolley so we could move the fridge.  Kinda funny, quite scary.

The water was lapping just an inch or so under the floor of my parents' house when we got home.  Finally crawled into bed at 11pm, cold, barely dry, very tired.  In the morning the water had receded but overnight we'd been declared a natural disaster zone.  Trees down everywhere, cars strewn across roads where they'd been picked up by the water (and still occupied by drivers).  A few suburbs over they were chest deep in water.

Tonight. towns in the Valley are being evacuated.  I'm at my inlaws' house with various other refugees and given that the Hunter River is set to reach its peak flood level tomorrow I'm unlikely to leave (since both my escape routes cross the Hunter).  I didn't go home because if the power goes out I'd be at home with the baby and no water.  And I didn't stayat my parents' because if they'd flooded I'd be stranded with my car underwater.  Here I'm high, safe and with plenty of company and chocolate.

Anyway  we'll see how it all goes tonight.  I'm worried about ,my dog, he's in a kennel in one of the areas likely to flood.  There saying the flood's going to reach similar levels to the '71 floods.

Woollyyy

Wwow.  Wwhat a tremendous, awesome, bizarre-o day - have been staying at my parents' place In Town and today the traffic was snarled up in the city.  I thought it was because of the weather (some streets were cordoned off due to flooding)  but it turns out that just about everyone in the city was headed for the harbour for a sticky.

AT the freighter that had beached itself on Nobbys Beach.

!

Of course, all the roads were blocked so we didn't get to see it (and the baby got cranky so we couldn't get to Stockton to get the view from there) so early in the morning we're going to try to find a park in Newcastle East and wlak up to the Fort to see it.  I think they're not letting foot traffic through either - but then maybe the absence of crowds was due to the horrendous rain rather than official blockades. 

I missed most of the news coverage tonight because I had to go out and get fuel, and the rain was so heavy it took me 45 mins to take a 5 min return trip.  Roads were flooded, I nearly got wiped out by a truck, nearly went underwater (ok, minor exaggeration but the water was level with the undercarriage) and my toes nearly froze tramping through the ankle deep water at the service station.  And then I was naughty and crossed the blocakde so I could take the industrial highway instead of another 30 minute detour through four suburbs to get 300 metres home.  Stupid railway lines.  Stupid rain.  Which is set to continue for another 24 hours or so.

18 metre waves!  As a measure of how messy the water was (surf-wise, I mean) there was not a single idiot on their board today.  Not one.