Our daughter, Claire Elise, was born on October 29, 2009. Here’s a photo of her, and another with her proud family.
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Introducing Claire
Category: My family and me
Karen, Xander, Claire, Random Rogue, and me.
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Parents go north
My parents chose an “interesting” time to move to Cairns. It was the weekend of January 10-11, and Far North Queensland had been absolutely drenched by the storm systems accompanying Cyclone Charlotte. Cairns was isolated due to flooding, and parts of Cairns itself were underwater. The city, along with many other councils across the Far North region, was declared a disaster area. They set out in their car on the morning of the 11th, and arrived at their new house in Clifton Beach a day later than they were expecting on the 14th. The delay was caused by the flooding of the Seymour River north of Ingham, partly due to the storms and partly due to the massive king tides at the time. Anyway, after spending the night in Ingham, and then waiting for another seven hours the next day in a long convoy of cars on the Bruce Highway for the waters to subside to a safe level, they were finally on their way again. In the end, their removal truck beat them to their house, because trucks were allowed to cross the river many hours before cars were given the go-ahead. Even then, cars were towed through the water three at a time by a tow truck: one on top, one underneath, and one dragged along behind. My parents scored the top deck of the truck, and they remained in the car for the haul across the river. Quite exciting, apparently. When they eventually reached their house, they were happy to find everything in one piece, and not so much as a branch out of place.
We’re going to get the chance to see their new house for ourselves when we visit them in the near future. It will be Xander’s first flight. If it’s anything like his first train trip, he’ll have a ball. Just hope we can avoid the Dengue fever epidemic when we get there.
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The ones Karen rejected
Karen has a very critical eye when it comes to photos, especially her own photos. In order to let a few more of her snaps see the light of day, I’ve created an album in my gallery called Karen’s Rejects. This also saves me from having to take my own pictures. It contains a small selection of those photos that don’t make it onto her photo blog. Here are some that she took today at Mount Glorious.
It was a wet, overcast day. But it made for a great drive up to Mount Glorious, which was shrouded in clouds. The atmosphere created by the fog as we drove through the rainforest was worth the trip alone. The Elm Haus Cafe was very inviting to the sodden traveller, and provided us with a homely lunchtime meal. We plan to revisit for Devonshire Tea sometime.
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Henricksen.id.au
Karen has finally replaced her decrepit, shamefully out-of-date “web site” (which she created using Microsoft Word – Microsoft Word, people!) with a shiny new photo blog. The site already features a number of great (and sometimes odd) photos taken with her brand spanking new Canon 450D. Take a look.
Oh, and happy birthday, sweetheart!
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A year of parenthood
It’s been just over a year since Xander was born, and I can quite honestly say it’s been the most fulfilling year of my life so far. Parenthood is everything they say it is: tiring, rewarding, sometimes difficult, but ultimately truly wonderful. To me the year seems to have passed fairly quickly, although it’s been jam packed with stuff.
Xander had a fantastic 1st birthday party, meticulously organised by his mummy. He’s just started walking, and he has a penchant for climbing stuff. He likes to try to climb the dresser by sort of doing chin ups and then getting traction with his feet against the cupboard. His favourite word is “bird”, though lately he’s really into “balloons” (because we’ve still got bunches of them hanging around our house from his birthday). He’s a happy and frightfully energetic little soul.
We’re still dealing with his allergy problem, but we’ve got an appointment with one of the two paediatric allergists in the state in October (somehow we managed to jump the 13 month waiting list, which we’re kind of relieved about, because his allergy isn’t limited to cow’s milk protein, unfortunately). One gets the feeling that allergies are still not well understood by medical researchers. Nobody seems to agree about how they come about or what the best course of action is.
The second year of his life is going to be an eventful one for our family, with a few things on the agenda before next July. Here’s hoping it all goes smoothly!
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MacKaren
Karen has joined the Rebel Alliance by getting a MacBook. And she loves it, though she claims “Vista made me do it!”
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No computer weekend
I love my MacBook Pro, but this weekend I’m leaving it at the office.
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Xander 0.5
Today marks six months since Xander was born. We marked the occasion by dashing off to South Bank as soon as the sun broke out from behind the clouds. It was a nice break from the dramas of the last couple of weeks and a nice way to spend the last day of holidays for me, too.
On Saturday we had planned to take Xander to Tamborine Mountain for a walk in the rainforest. Little did we know that most of the routes (if not all the routes) up to the mountain were closed due to flooding. The photos below show the flooded Clutha Creek near the small town of Tamborine. We had to do a U-turn and head someplace else. Of all places we ended up at the cafe by Springfield Lake.
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Goodbye 7, hello 8
2007 was a huge year for my family and me. The main event was, of course, the birth of our son, Xander, on 07/07/07. For that reason, 2007 is one of the best years on record, but also one of the most challenging. Karen’s done a wonderful job and made some pretty big sacrifices…
Unfortunately the year didn’t end quite as well as it might have. Xander had an anaphylactic reaction when we tried to feed him some formula for the first time. He’s probably allergic to cow’s milk protein, we’ve been told. Within five to ten minutes of beginning his feed, he’d developed dark red blotches on his face, little white welts appeared in his elbow and knee creases and around his ankles, and his eyeballs went red and swollen. He was howling and trying to scratch his eyes out.
That was all pretty scary, but the hospital fixed him up pretty quickly with a dose of antihistamines and steroids. There’s a good chance he’ll grow out of this allergy in a few years, but there’s also a chance he’s allergic to nuts (among other things). We’ll find out when he has some allergy testing conducted.
This year is set to be another big one on a number of fronts. I extend to all the readers of The Thin Line my very best wishes for 2008; may it be joyful and prosperous. Happy New Year everyone!