Happy birthday little man

From this...














to this.
















Sometimes it seems like yesterday, sometimes it seems like a million years ago. He is happy, healthy, funny and 2 years old today. Happy birthday my man. We love you.

1,2,3,4... yay!

Counting and kicking balloons- these are two of his fave things to do! Patrick is turning two soon- wow is that hard to believe. It's not so long ago that I remember what it was like to be a new daddy, proud and scared and... well... in love all over again.

In that spirit... today is a special day in the family. Patrick's little second cousin, Lily Carolyn was born this afternoon. You may remember her from this picture...

















Believe me when I say that no two people have ever been more deserving of their precious baby more than Kelly and Mr C.

To quote her daddy...

"She's perfect. An angel. Can't believe it."

Perfect indeed.

Congratulations guys. You did it Kelly.

My favourite "daily" photos of Patrick

Boy, have I been remiss in updating this blog! In beginning the process of getting back on track, here are some examples of daily updates Heather sends me of Patrick's daily adventures. She takes a photo when they are out and about, and I get to see what they are up to...

hellos and goodbyes...

It has been a long time between posts, for sure. More on that in coming days, with lots of things to keep everyone up to speed with my life in Seattle, but today I wanted to post about two things...

Firstly, I want to thank my Grandma for helping to look after me these past few weeks. See you in January Grandma!

And secondly, I would like to proudly introduce you to my second cousin. Nobody has ever been more loved than this little person...

Birthdays...

What love has love brought to this world?
What joy has pleasure wrought?
For this, our celebration, sings
Of far more than we sought.







A special call also goes out to my Uncle Grant who will be 31 years young on Tuesday and to Charlie "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" G who is 21 today! (or so he told me...)

Happy Father's Day - thank you all.

Today is a special day for dads, and I want to say to these people- I love it when you take me for early morning hikes in my backpack, read stories to me, hold my hand when I learn to walk while mommy and daddy are away and catch me in your arms when I stumble into them.

I can't wait for when you can teach me about the planets and the stars, pick apples with me and take the dogs for a walk, run 10km races with me or teach me to hit a cover drive and kick a drop punt like a true-blue Aussie. For now I'll settle for a steady hand to hold.

Check out what I just learned to do...

Hello all,

Sorry I have been a little incommunicado lately. All is well, I have had a wonderful few weeks with visits from my AWESOME Godparents, my beloved Uncle Rocky, and some special time with Grandma and Grandpa. We are moving to some place called Seattle next week so things are kinda crazy- and I have just spent a week up in the mountains with mom, dad and Grandma. I cheered mom on as she did "Ride the Rockies". I shall post some pics of my awesome mom soon (or you can check out daddy's FB page), but for now I wanted to share something with you that I learnt to do this week...

All I can say is check me out!

To all of my mums and moms, thank you.

Easter

Happy Easter everybody! I spent mine wondering what an egg hunt is, and why the eggs aren't all chocolate. (actually, no, that was dad who wondered that).






Because I thought it was all a bit strange (and
what was with that huge fluffy white thing with big ears that everyone wanted to say hello to?), I decided to just play in the grass and pull faces...






In other news, I have become very mobile in an awful hurry, and so
mom and dad have decided that for some reason I need to be contained.
Not sure what the big deal is down there, but those stairs on the other side of the gate seem easy to negotiate to me. Nonetheless, here is what they put in my way.

As soon as I work out the way to climb out of my crib
(and believe me, I'm tryin'), I'll be over that gate and off!

See you soon.

Allow me to introduce...

Hello all,

I have some special people to introduce y'all (I just got back from the South and still have the vernacular down) to.

I just got back to snowy Denver from Washington DC and North Carolina where mom and dad strapped me into a car seat for what seemed like 10 days straight... and when I wasn't in a car seat I was in a plane. That makes 12 separate flights already- at more than 1 flight per month of my life I should have Premier Elite frequent flyer status in no time. Pity the airline won't let me sit in business class... something about my penchant for screaming and squirming while people in suits are trying to read something important in the newspaper. The good news is that I am now, officially, an Aussie. Now for mom... she sat her Aussie citizenship exam at the embassy in DC last week and when the results come back we shall find out if she knows how to crack open a tinny, kick a drop punt and play a cover drive. That, and something about a decision to do with someone called Mabo came up in the test- I told mommy that if she just remembered that "It's the constitution. It's MABO. It's just... the vibe" then she'd be fine.








So, anyhoo, I have some very important people for you to meet. The first person I caught up with is someone you have met before. You may remember her- she was there when I was born and in fact laid eyes upon me before even mom or dad (or at least the top of my head... I'll stop there). It was great to see her again- I am A LOT bigger than when I last saw her.
She has a doggy who loves to give me kisses and who protectively watched over me - she got very worried when I emptied the entire contents of my stomach after dinner onto mommy and cried a lot in the bath.

I love my Auntie Adrianne- she is a very special person.





Now, as many of you know, I met my first great grandparent in Australia when I was 2 months old. Here is a reminder- I had a lot less hair then than now (for daddy it's the reverse). Well, last week I got to meet with my other great grandmother who is nearly 94 years old! She has a nice chair on which she let me snuggle in next to her, and we had a great time. I visited her every day for a week.












And, then, I got to meet two wonderful and very important people - Kelly and Charlton, who are very special to me and who I have been waiting to meet. I already miss them a lot, and unfortunately they live a long way away (like so many people in my life do). Here is my Godmother; Kelly. She is sweet and kind and gave me so many hugs. She introduced me to her 2 very friendly dogs, sat with me at the window, fed me my favorite food (which is sweet potato) and played with all my toys with me on the floor. She always looks cool too, which is great because my dad routinely looks like a dag (the definition of which, surprisingly, came up in mom's Aussie citizenship test). I was worried that I wouldn't have anyone to help me look good - all I seem to wear are sleep suits with dinosaurs on them. Another reason why I love Kelly is that she can speak "Strine"! All of you Aussies (like me) out there know how bad those attempted Aussie accents are. When mom tries hers she sounds like a member of the British royal family. But Kelly nails it! It must be the talented thespian in her. I think my time snuggling with her made us both feel, well, better.

Here I am with Mr C (as he is known in some places) - he has a comfy lap as you can see, and he went running with daddy where daddy made him talk on the uphill bits, making daddy seem fitter than he really is. He puts lots of cool videos on Facebook like this one... for all you Facebook freaks out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs






So, we had a fantastic time with the family. I can't wait to see them all again soon. Mommy and daddy's favorite part of the week was going out to Barley's tap room in Asheville with Kelly and Charlton for dinner - sans infant. First time in 9 months - thank you all!

Seriously. Thank you.