Paddling pursuits

Once Eli had the all clear to resume watery activities from the Doctor, we were back into things with a vengence. Just for something a little bit different we got one of the old surf skis out on the canal and Tyden, Grandma and I all enjoyed a paddle up and down the canal. Eli was desperately keen to have a go too, even despite the fact that he had to keep his life jacket on. After a few tentative paddles he quickly got the hang of it and as you can see from the photos, he moved on to some other activities too. Eli and I went on a paddle together for a while too and when we got back to the beach house Eli decided to show everyone his 'self rescue', as demonstrated in the video.

Fast forward just a couple of days and Eli had convinced me that he could paddle without his life jacket on (yes, I'm a pushover, but he was closely supervised!). His paddling style was vastly improved too and I can now imagine us doing quite a bit of paddling together down the track - it has actually made me start thinking of kayaks and roof racks - yes, I think there is lots to look forward to now that Eli is on top of his swimming!

Yabbies!

Not getting wet (at least from the chin up) represented a little bit of a challenge at the beach, so we decided on one trip to the sandbank that we'd try our luck catching some bait, in the form of marine yabbies. Eli hadn't seen or used the yabby pump before, so off we headed on a new adventure. Our first stop, where we were closely watched by a pelican and a lot of cormorants, didn't yield any yabbies, so we decided to head to our normal section of the sandbank and do some pumping in 'stingray alley', which is a favourite spot of Eli's for running and splashing around like a maniac. It wasn't long before we starting getting yabbies and Eli was an excellent retriever, often diving onto the unsuspecting yabbies and giving them no chance to escape. He was incredibly good at picking them up and not getting pinched by their over-sized claw and we formed quite a good team, with me pumping and Eli catching the yabbies.






Here's team 'yabby' (Eli and I), at stingray alley - now our favourite spot for yabby pumping too.

Eli was so taken with the yabbies that he just couldn't stop picking them up - here he is holding one in the boat on the trip back to the beach house!

 

He kept playing once we got back to the jetty too and even developed a new game, which involved selecting the yabby with the biggest claw and, holding it carefully, he'd go 'fishing' - effectively using the claw to catch another yabby in the bucket. 

He thought this was an excellent game despite my warnings that he'd get pinched before long...needless to say, I was right. Given how he screamed at the time you would have thought that that experience would been enough to put an end to the game, but like a moth to a flame (or a boy to a yabby!), he started playing his game again once the pain in his finger had subsided. Of course he got pinched again - and in the end I had to separate him from his yabby friends... 

Although Grandad used some of the yabbies as bait for fishing, and with some success, Eli decided to release most of them into the canal...so now I guess we have to watch our toes whilst swimming!

Time to get out and go exploring

After a few dry (no swimming) days at the beach house, it is fair to say that Eli was starting to go a bit crazy. So, one afternoon we decided to go exploring, starting with the mangrove boardwalk... Eli brought his camera along, so these are the photos that he and I snapped. We first searched for crabs in the mangroves...and we saw hundreds of them. They were only small, the biggest being about the size of a 50 cent piece, but Eli wanted to photograph every single one of them, so our progress along the boardwalk was pretty slow. That's not a bad thing though, because it meant that we also saw a roosting sea eagle, mud-skippers and heaps of other bugs and spiders too. One of the highlights was seeing some of the crabs actively feeding, like the one in this video.

While we were on the mangrove boardwalk we heard, and then saw, a fruit bat roosting site that seemed pretty close, so we decided to investigate.We knew we were getting close when we smelt their characteristic 'fruity' smell - Eli hadn't smelt it up close before and wasn't a big fan of it at all. They were also really noisy, as you can tell from the video, so we didn't linger long...

We next decided to head further away from the water - there were a few mossies around - so we headed up to the lookout above Noosa Heads - here's a photo of the northern beach at Noosa, the mouth of the Noosa River and the North Shore (where the 4WD vehicle is).

On the way back home we thought we'd drive around the headland to the entrance to the National Park - a place where we often see koalas - and lo and behold, there was one in a tree right at the entrance to the park. It made for a perfect end to our little zoological adventure (and it helped Eli get back into his normal good mood again!). Mission accomplished.

Santa really delivers!

After our excitement on Christmas Eve (see the previous post), Eli was very excited to see if Santa had taken notice of how brave he was when getting his stitches. I'm not 100% convinced that Santa would view bravery at the Doctor without also considering ridiculous chair-riding behaviours, but let's leave that debate for another time.

It turns out that Santa had more than lived up to his reputation, as Eli received not just a stocking full of gifts, but also a crate worth of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines (which is exactly what Eli had asked for). He was particularly chuffed when he unwrapped his favourite - Leonardo (the leader in blue).


          








After opening Santa's gifts, the kids all sat at the kitchen bench for some breakfast, before reconvening at the Christmas Tree for another gift unwrapping session!

Here's a nice photo of Grandma and Grandad, and one of Eli and I near the Christmas Tree - all of us looking nice and relaxed (prior to the huge session of gift giving).










Eli was understandably quite content with his loot from before breakfast, although a couple more Ninja Turtle 'bad guys' from Daddy put a nice big smile on his face!















The rest of the Eli's day was largely dedicated to playing with the Ninja Turtles in various fighting poses...Eli also really enjoyed taking photos of them with his camera.







Fortunately, Eli wasn't completely anti-social and he did take some time out to show Oliver, Harrison and Charlie how to play with the dinosaurs we gave them....













After a delicious Christmas Day lunch, Eli and Alora got to eat the snowmen that they had created, with Grandma's help, the day before. Even though his snowman looked great, Eli had absolutely no quarms devouring his head!

All I want for Christmas...is three stitches in my chin?

We'd headed to the coast a few days before Christmas this year and were having a great time - Eli was starting to catch waves  both with and without his boogie board (I'll no doubt come back to this in a future post) - when disaster intervened. As those of you that know Eli well will know, he can't really stay still for long and so it was, on Christmas Eve, when he was swivelling around on Grandad's recliner. Now I know I probably should have taught Eli about centrifugal force earlier, but I guess there is no substitute for first hand experience. Long story short - he fell off the chair and landed with a hefty whack, chin first, on the tiled floor. I was sitting in the chair next to him, so I swept him up pretty quickly, only to discover a hole where one shouldn't be...as the Doctor said later on, it's like Eli had a new mouth open up at his chin...so lots of stress (on my part) and crying (on Eli's part) and support (from Grandma) later, Eli had three stitches in his chin and, worse still, directions to stay out of the water for the next two days! So much for a surf on Christmas Day! To his credit Eli was (as always) a great patient and handled it all pretty well (including not getting in the water). I think Christmas Day the next day helped a bit too...

As a bit of a post-script, Eli's chin has healed up nicely now, although I think there will be a scar (despite my Vitamin E treatments!). As a few people have told me, that will be fine, he's a boy and it might even impress girls further down the track...

At home with the gudgeons.

There have been some changes in our fish tank. First, I decided that I only wanted native fish, so the swordtail and guppies have been moved on (to our front pond - hopefully they'll keep the mosquito population down!) and we now have tank full of gudgeons.

My favourite (and Eli's too) is the purple spotted gudgeon who has taken residence inside one of the 'rooms' in the ruins in our tank...his colours have really come along now - no doubt courtesy of the frequent and high quality food he gets every day! 

The other gudgeons in the tank are smaller - these are the firetailed gudgeons and I think they're pretty cool and colourful too, but they certainly can't compete with the striking colours of the purple spotted gudgeons.

 




Finally, here is a video of the large male purple spotted gudgeon, emerging from his front door for a spot of scavenging before returning home through the side entrance.

Prep is done, bring on Grade 1!

Eli has finished his first year of school (with flying colours too - just in case you were wondering). His final day was a free dress day which culminated in a lunch-time party.








Before the food and craziness began, Eli and his class sang a few Christmas carols for the parents that came along and then each child presented their parents with a Christmas gift - which included a portfolio of their work from the whole year, a tree ornament and a ceramic photo frame (complete with photo) and a thermometer - not bad huh?

Let the party begin!
I took the opportunity to get some photos of Eli with his friends...

 ...but the sugar soon started to kick in...and with it came funny faces and crazy dancing! There was no music playing mind you, but these lads had a great time performing for the camera...Eli didn't eat too much sugary food, so he finished the day off ok, but I think a few of these kids would have driven their families crazy later in the afternoon.