Sunday, March 22, 2009

Mischief Maker









Annabelle loves to explore. She crawls all over and gets into EVERYTHING! She's so quick about it too. I had just gotten her out of the bathroom, only to find her doing this in the kitchen. She has learned to open cupboards and drawers now as well. Luckily, we pretty much baby proofed everything when we moved in, so she can't get into too much trouble. In fact, the only reason the trash can isn't in the cupboard is because it annoyed Dave to have to open the door to get to it. Her latest favorite is the cookie cutters. She loves to pull them out and dump them all over the floor. I'm pretty sure they could entertain her for most of the day. She's so cute!!


















Monday, March 9, 2009

There's No Place Like Home


Annabelle and I returned from visiting the US last week. We went back for my sister Gretchen's wedding. We had a great time being back in the US and seeing friends and family. Upon returning we found that our apartment complex now has a cockroach problem. We have only had a handful in our apartment, but they are large, quick, and just plain gross. Everyone here tells us we should count ourselves lucky if that is the only pest problem we have. A lot of other people here have far worse pest problems. They include, but I am sure are not limited to: Australian Redback spiders (equivalent to our black widows, only they like to be indoors), rats, poisonous frogs, moths, and midgees (small flies that bite).




My favorite incident of the week was when I grabbed my sneakers to put them on. As always I looked inside to make sure there were no little creatures in there. I was saying to myself, you are so paranoid, you don't always have to check your shoes. Sure enough, just then a cockroach crawled out of my shoe. It's just so wrong!! I hate them! I know hate is a strong word, but I assure you I used it appropriately here. We have been doing all we can as individuals to get rid of them and it may have worked because I haven't seen any for a couple of days. We'll keep our fingers crossed.


What's so great about the US? Why do we miss it? The US has great food, all the products you could ever need and then some, great tv shows, family and friends. It also has baby food. What 1st world country doesn't sell baby foods?!?! Apparently Australia. Well, I can't say they don't have any baby food. They just have mixes of 4 or more ingredients, like lamb, carrots, rice, and beets or some other weird concoctions. They don't sell single baby foods the way you need to introduce them to your baby. So on top of everything else I have to deal with living here I also have to make all my own baby food. Awesome! I am so stoked about this ;). I guess I'll look at it this way, living here has made me appreciate all I had in the US so much more!! There really is no place like home!