Eat or be eaten

Its been far too long between posts and for that we can only say... its not our fault.
Its the fuggin gummint.

(Or at least their section that deals with the child care rebate, which refunded us the princely sum of $102 for our years child care instead of a few thousand, then told Mistress P it was cos Mike hadn't had his shots.
Which he had.
And they'd lost the correspondence saying so.)

We'll just look at it as a Xmas bonus for not dropping him on his head.
Too often.

The past few weeks have been hectic in the least, with mum and dad frantically finishing exams, giving press conferences, writing milestone reports and...

Taking leave.

Yes, finally the family headed off into the wilds of east Gippsland on a long earned weeks break. A cabin was booked at the sleepy Cape Conran National Park and the household decamped to the coast for a few days R&R.

And being 2 weeks before chrissie (a time when people have to win a ballot to find a place to stay at this place) there was barely a soul to be seen. In fact, if you did see someone you almost felt like saying:

"Fair go mate... find you own beach. There's 90 miles of it."

The lack of human also meant a plethora of animals, and hence lots of animal/Master M interaction. He saw swamp wallabies, a huge red bellied black snake, a Turquoise parrot (very rare, in fact unseen, in those parts) and humpback whales.

The only problem is the lad's still too naive to know the difference between an animal that's cute and cuddly and in love with human interaction, and one that'll rip yer bloody arm orf.

Case in point.

A particularly daring young kookaburra would come to our cabin in search of food. So we broke all the rules and took M onto the deck and tossed a piece of sausage to kooky.
(I know I know - we shouldn't. So kill us.)
The Kookaburra loved this.
Mike loved it.
Kookaburra came closer.
Mike got more excited.
Kookaburra got that "Mmmm... those toddler fingers look like the perfect plump juicy worms/mini sausages combo" look in his eye.
Just as Mike went in for a pat/hug.

No fingers were lost in the making of this blog, but lets just say we're glad he wasn't having some nappy free time and flopping about in his glory.

The other critters that took a liking to Master M were the mozzies. There were gazillions of the bastards. And for some reason Mike never grizzled once when they were sucking the life juice out of him, and only occasionally swatted or even motioned to the little blighters as they swarmed in on his little bod.

Which mum and dad made even worse one time when they accidentally trapped about five of the suckers in under his pram cover. Those mozzies must have thought all their Xmases had come at once.

Hence by the end of the week, and despite copious amounts of aerogard (avagoodweegend), the poor lad was less angelic pure china skin, and had more puncture marks than the test dummy at acupuncture school.
But he never whinged once.
Which is more than we can say for dad.

What he did do was eat. In fact, he be the eatin' machine. We swear he grew half an inch in the week.

But what he didn't do was sleep. In fact it was probably his most interrupted sleep for a year, with refusals to go to bed, long crying in the cot, early wake ups ("Oh... a beautiful 5:20am sunrise... thanks Mike") and 1am "Mummy/Daddy" (i.e., is it playtime yet?) calls in the dark.

The worst was on the return voyage and a sleepover at a friends house in Paynesville on the Gippsland Lakes, complete with 3 kiddies and, all the more importantly, their toys. And hence it was here that Mike discovered Thomas. As in the Tank Engine.

Or more to the point, the engines and carriages and click-together track that make up a whole Thomas world.

Mike quickly discovered that the carriages and locos link (via their little Thomas magnets) together to form great long snaking, well, trains. Which he could push about the floor, roll under chairs/thomas bridges/dad, and best of all, unlink to make two trains! (We shudder to think what'll happen whern he learns he can do the same with a living creature like a worm.)

So it was all trains trains trains.
Or "twains twains twains" as he started to say.

We've never seen the tike so enamoured with an inanimate object in all his 20 months. He literally sat and played and chugged and joined and split and crashed and "oh-oh"ed for hours.

Including when it came to bedtime.
"Twains! Twains"
And when it came to 1:45 in the blessed AM.
"Twains! Twains!"
("No Micheal, its sleep time; you can play trains tomorrow")
"Twains! Twains!"
Till 3am.

He was indeed the fat controller - (well, actually, quite well proportioned we think) .

The trip to the Lakes also saw his first canoe ride, which would have been all fine and dandy 'cept he suddenly became determined that unlike mum he was a bonefide landlubber, and kept trying to climb out.

Luckily mum had a) put a lifejacket on him, and b) was quick on the grab.

Finally, and totally unrelated to both canoodling and twains; we have a mate who swears that he has perfected the art of the after-windsurf shower by drinking a beer as he suds up.
Well Mike has further revolutionised post-activity showering as we know it by insisting on taking a particularly coveted BBQ Shape under the showerhead with dad, clutching it throughout the sudsising, then eating the sodden-edged but still amazingly crisp inner BBQ Shape as he was dried off.

Genius.

All up, he traveled like a champion (mostly playing with three model cars), ate like a horse - "kikifuit" (a.k.a kiwifuit) being a new favourite - was eaten by insects thgouh luckily not avians (just), and slept like a tuna (Dad: "Dogs sleep just fine - tunas dont sleep").

And its been the fastest 20 months of mum's, dad's and, frankly, his life.

Merry Xmas.

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