Two performing monkeys

I wouldn't say that I'm cut out to be a kids portrait photographer, but every now and then I manage to get Eli and Alora cooperating with me when I have the camera. On this occasion I figured that I may as well try and get these two monkeys to strike up some silly poses for me to snap...and as it turned out they were most obliging.

As always, we started with cheesy grins and for the greatest possible effect followed it up with our best cross looks....



Next we went a little more subdued, by sucking in our bottom lips and looking off into the distance, although another good cross look soon put a stop to that!



Then we tried hands on heads, followed by eyes closed.



Finished up with heads together followed by a good hearty laugh...

The big wheel!

For just over a year now, Brisbane has had a big wheel. And not just any big wheel - this one has held Eli's attention like no other. Every time we drive into town he has to see it out his window and if it's at night time we have to try and guess what colours it will be (it's normally white, but was once all pink for a fund raising event and on the odd occasion it has also been blue on the outside and red in the middle). The big wheel has become such a distraction for Eli that he typically won't fall asleep in the car (no matter how late it is) until we've seen the big wheel and discussed, at length, it's colour.

Given Eli's fascination with the big wheel I decided that we needed to experience the wheel up close. So when Grandma Susan came to visit we headed down to Southbank to take a ride. Eli was very excited about it and chatted about the big wheel all the way into town, but I don't think he realised quite how big the wheel is until we were at it's base. I think he might have even been a little bit anxious at that point too - here's a photo of him studying the design and structural integrity of the big wheel before we climbed on board one of the gondolas.

I snapped this next shot as we headed up on our first rotation on the big wheel. As frequent visitors to this blog will know, Eli's not normally quite this subdued.




Here's a shot of the two of us together at the very top of the big wheel; and one with Eli peering out the window while sitting next to Grandma.




As you might expect, Eli took to the ride really well and didn't seem at all worried about how high we were. He had great fun spotting the buses, trains, trucks and CityCat ferries that we could see and he agreed that people down on the ground looked a lot like ants, which might explain his general eagerness to stomp on both people and ants when he's down on the ground...



By the time we'd been around the loop a few times Eli was so comfortable that he even started looking straight down and was starting to find new and inventive ways to sit in the gondola. In some ways I think it was good that the adventure ended soon thereafter, because I imagine he would have started jumping up and down or rocking the gondola from side to side if we'd been on board much longer...

Introducing the twins...

I really don't think that these videos need any explanation...

Local critters are fun too!

After our fix of wildlife in Alice Springs we've been really excited by all of the critters in our own neighbourhood. Our first close encounter with wildlife was when a Noisy Pitta tried to knock our house over by slamming itself into our glass doors. The poor bird got quite a shock (we found it lying on it's back with it's feet up in the air) and was in danger of becoming a quick snack for our local Butcherbird. Fortunately, Eli and I were quick enough to save him and we nursed him back to health before releasing him into our back garden. Eli was great too - he was gentle and really helpful and he made sure that the Butcherbird didn't return (although I think that his ferocious 'war cries' may have upset the Noisy Pitta a little bit too!).





We next encountered some friendly locals on one of our walks around the neighbourhood. We spotted a pair of Tawny Frogmouths (left) in one of the trees across the road from our house - Eli thought they looked hilarious and wasn't too annoyed that they didn't respond to his yelling. After that we found an eastern bearded dragon that Eli wanted to touch (just like the one in Alice), but fortunately he headed my warnings and kept a safe distance away.

A town like Alice.

At the end of September we went to Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory and pretty much in the middle of Australia. I spent three days at the Australian Society for Limnology's annual congress but we had a bit of time either side of the congress to do some exploring too.

The highlights for Eli were the reptiles (especially the ones he got to touch) and the fun and games he got up to in the Todd River.

Here are some of our favourite lizards from the Alice Springs Reptile Centre - a thorny devil (left) and western bearded dragon (right).




The real highlight for Eli was when we were able to touch the reptiles. Here are some photos of Eli and I holding a western bearded dragon and a shingle back skink. Eli also kissed a western blue tongue skink, but unfortunately we didn't get a photo of that... We had also hoped to touch the large Olive python, but as Eli indignantly declared, there were 'too many people!'





We stayed right on the banks of the mighty Todd River and it was a great place for us to play and spot the occasional bird like the Mallee Ringneck Parrot.





We went for plenty of walks along (and in) the river and as per usual, Eli also spent a great deal of time throwing rocks around the place.

A new Spiderman villian is born...the rise of Hangerman.

Watch out superheroes, there's a new, more diabolical and more fearsome villian ready to wreak havoc on the civilised world...

Yes, Eli loves hangers - we all know that. But when does a healthy admiration become a deadly obsession? He's so smitten with them that I'm beginning to wonder. First, he happily lays down on the ground and lets me cover him, head to toe, in hangers. Then, like some kind of new age Frankenstein, he emerges through the hangers (only to request that the whole process be repeated, again and again and again).





Actually, now that I think about it, it might be better when he's subdued like that, because when he's up and about that's when he's at his most dangerous... just check out these moves!




So if you ever come to visit, just watch out for the stray hanger in the back of your head...

The hole.

The previous owners of our house left us with a hole in one of our outside feature walls, courtesy of a fountain they took with them. Until recently, I'd resigned myself to the fact that it will always be a hole, as I had no plans to fill it in or cover it up. All that changed when Eli found it and decided that he had a great way of filling in the hole...with rocks!

Here are a couple of short videos of him solving our little problem...he gets it right in the first one, but in the second video he discovers that it's actually more fun to push the rocks all the way through the wall. And yes, there is now a growing pile of rocks at the base of the wall as testament to his devotion to this task.