The Stages of Sleep Deprivation - Baby Jet Lag Edition

Denial 

Night 1: "She slept through the night for 15 hours!  I don't think she's going to have jet lag!"

Night 2:

- 9PM: "Is she awake already?" "No, can't be, I think she's just talking in her sleep."

- 11PM: "Maybe if we do bath time and her bedtime routine again she'll go back to sleep"

- 1AM: "Let's try to get her down in an hour, she should be tired by then."

Anger

"Why did we let her sleep so long today?!" "I'm so tired, we're never traveling outside of Mountain Standard Time again!"

Bargaining

"Is it ok if I just go to sleep for an hour, then I'll take the next shift if she still hasn't gone to sleep?"

Depression

"I'm so tired I want to cry."

Acceptance

"This is our life now.  We'll never sleep again."

Excuse the dimness of the photo, but we're trying to convince her it's night time.

The Highs and the Lows or How Australia is "Way Better" (pronounced with and Australian accent) Than Canada and Vice Versa

I'll start with the "lows", just so I don't finish on a negative note.

Lows

1.  Their butter and their bacon.  Come on Australia, get it together!  I seriously question a country that can't get butter and bacon right.

2.  We call it "Resting Australian Face".  We take for granted in Canada the good feeling you get from passing a stranger, giving them a smile and having them reciprocate.  Don't try it in Australia, 9 out of 10 times, you won't get a warm fuzzy in return.  

3.  Car seats.  Australian law is to turn babies forward facing at 6 months.  If you've done any research on car seat safety, you know how scary this is.  We had to advocate often to get rear facing seats for Arra, then fought with the installation of the seat.  And she HATED her car seats there.  Road trips were brutal.  We were all very happy to get her back into her own seat today.

4.  "Nappies and prams".  Those words are so annoying, just call them diapers and strollers. Also, their nappies are the worst.  Love me some Pampers!

5.  Street signs.  As far as we could tell, they are optional.  One corner may have none, while the next may have so many that they become a meaningless jumble.  

6.  So many gross and potentially deadly critters.  When we next hit -50 I will do my best to think "At least we don't have cockroaches and huntsmen spiders".

Highs

1.  Snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef.  Canada just doesn't have it and it's fricken awesome

2.  Beaches.  I know Canada has beautiful beaches too, but living in Fort McMurray we miss out on them a bit to say the least.  We loved our beach days in Aus!

3.  Cell phone plans.  So cheap, tonnes of data, no contracts!  There's a special place in Hell for Canadian cell phone carriers.

4.  Asian cuisine.  I kind of took for granted how close Australia is to Asia; therefore, many Asian country visitors and immigrants = lots of yummy food!

5.  Fresh seafood.  Again, it's the whole Landlocked Alberta thing.

6.  Parks, playgrounds, skate parks, giant outdoor trampolines, surf school, beach volleyball classes and so many other outdoor things for kids to do.  I'm sure the weather plays a factor, but there seemed to be so many more outdoor activities available to Australian kids.  Loved seeing all of the active kids and families everywhere we went!

7.  Outdoor markets.  I love outdoor markets and there seemed to be at least one everywhere we went.

8.  Mandarins.  One of the lasting memories from Australia will be Clara's giant box of delicious mandarins purchased from the Queen Victoria Market and her constant mandarin pushing to get them all eaten.  We all had a 5 mandarin a day quota that we often surpassed.

So that's it, my final thoughts (although I may add more as the sleep deprivation subsides).  I absolutely loved every minute of my time in Australia and think from what I saw of it that it is a beautiful country.  If we are ever lucky enough to go again, I would do it in a heartbeat!  Until next time...

"Never Go On Trips With Anyone You Do Not Love"

This is it.  Wow.  We're all packed up to go and of course Arra has chosen today to be the day she sleeps past 6.  We'll have to wake her soon to go catch the plane.  Our last few days in Australia have been spent in Manly.  We have a beautiful condo on the ocean and have been unwinding with walks on the beach, playing in the sand and swimming in the ocean.  I guess we're boring now, but some of my most favourite nights have been these last few, where we actually get Arra to bed at a decent time, then we stay up drinking wine, playing cards or reading and listening to the ocean.  Cody has been a bit more adventurous than I have while we've been here.  He's gone surfing and spent one afternoon diving with giant sea turtles, queen sized mattress rays and 3.5+ meter sharks (while supervised by aquarium staff, at least).  Manly was an amazing last stop for us and a wonderful wrap up to this trip of a lifetime.  We are so lucky to have been able to take a trip like this and I feel particularly fortunate to have shared this with Cody and Arra and some of my closest friends.

Eggs Benedict on the balcony of our place in Manly.  No big deal.

Chillin on the beach with my girl.

Cody swimming with sharks.  Eeek!

Hipsters & Highways

A list of things we've lost so far:

- 1 of Arra's socks

- 1 of Arra's shoes

- 1 of my socks

- 3 of Arra's bottle brushes

- 1 of Arra's hats

- 1 of Cody's hats

- 1 cooler bag and 6 freezer packs

- 1 cellphone (pieces of it were found)

- 1 pair of sunglasses 

*Update -  Cody's sunglasses have been recovered!*

It's actually amazing that we haven't lost more considering the amount of stuff we're traveling with and the number of times we've unpacked and repacked.  Sadly with the loss of my cellphone (when I left it on the roof of a car), many of my photos from this last leg were lost too.  Thanks to Carly for sharing some of hers!

We arrived in Melbourne last Sunday and met up with Clara and Jon at our accommodations in the Collingwood area.  If you'd like me to paint a picture of the area for you, picture the deserted street in the industrial area scene in any zombie movie/tv show you've ever seen.  We were sure the cabbie had taken us to the wrong place.  It turns out that Melbourne's hippest neighbourhoods are in the middle of loads of converted warehouses, including the one we stayed in.  We spent the day wandering the streets and shops in the area.  The majority of our time was spent along with all of Melbourne's hipsters on the funky Brunswick Street.  We spent the next couple of days riding trams and hop-on hop-off buses and walking the streets to take in as many sights as we could.  Highlights for me were visiting the huge Queen Victoria Market,  checking out all of the street art/graffiti that can be found on almost every public building, spending a couple of hours walking through the UNESCO world heritage site Carlton Gardens and the Melbourne Museum where Arra had a blast playing in the children's museum.

Carly, Clara, Me and Candra.  Have had a great time traveling with these amazing women.

After a few days of barely scratching the surface of what Melbourne had to offer we said goodbye to Candra and piled into yet another minivan for The Great Ocean Road.  We made our way from Melbourne to Port Campbell, stopping in a few small towns and to check out the views along the way.  Some of our stops included watching the surfers on Bells Beach, the Split Point Lighthouse, the amazing limestone formations The Arch and London Bridge and just in time for sunset The 12 Apostles.  The best part of the day though was seeing a koala up close, in the wild!  We stayed in a cottage right on the ocean that night, then made our way back stopping at a few more sights and beaches before boarding the ferry to The Mornington Penninsula the next day.

Koala in the wild!  Clara tells us most Australians have never even seen one before!

12 Apostles at sunset

The Mornington Peninsula is a beautiful place on the coastline (as the name suggests), but is unique to any other place we've been in that it is made up of beautiful farms, 170 vineyards, olive groves and historic country houses.  We stayed at an amazing farm cottage right in the middle of the vineyards!  We made it to 6 of the 170, tasting (and purchasing) wines all the way.  We finished off our day with an uber fancy dinner at the Trofeo Estate vineyard nearby our cottage.  Today we made a brief visit back to Melbourne to enjoy the city for a few more hours and to say goodbye to Carly, we then took a short flight back to Sydney where we'll spend our last few days.  I can hardly believe our trip is winding down!

Snuggles at one of the many vineyards on the Mornington Peninsula 

Arra has fun on the wine tour too!

Koalas, and Wallabies, and Roos! Oh, My!

3 hours after departing Hervey Bay, we arrived in Brisbane to our new home away from home. We got some groceries and cooked a nice family dinner, then put Arra to bed at a decent time.  I think we all needed a bit of a chill day.

Our first full day in Brisbane we actually headed out of the city to nearby Surfers Paradise at The Gold Coast.  Surfers is a top tourist destination with lots of shopping, high rises and a huge, beautiful beach.  We checked out a few of the shops and then headed to the beach.  We had some playtime in the sand (Arra shared her toys for Cody and Carly's sand castle competition) and some time in the cool water.  Arra is loving the waves and the ocean and showing no fear now.  She's such a beach baby.  After we'd had our fill of the beach we made our way back to Brisbane and walked from our apartment through downtown to South Bank.  This is a busy area along the river with lots going on including outdoor movies, a huge public swimming pool, restaurants, art galleries and an outdoor market on Friday nights.  We went to the market and out for dinner while there that evening, and then returned to catch a boat the next day.

Fam Jam at Surfers Paradise

The boat we were catching on our 3rd day in Brisbane took us to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  This was a great day where we took a guided boat ride on the Brisbane River to the sanctuary.  We learned some history and got to see many giant houses before arriving at the 11 acre site.  During our visit we saw animals native to Australia, the highlight being, of course, the koalas.  We each were allowed to hold a koala briefly.  The sanctuary has a time limit in order to ensure that each koala is not held for more than thirty minutes every day and that they are not disturbed at all every 4th day.  We also got to feed and pet the kangaroos and wallabies in the 5 acre kangaroo reserve.  We even saw 3 mamas with little joeys sticking out of their pouches!  We finished off our visit to Brisbane with a stroll through Chinatown and takeout for dinner! 

Arra and I feeding a wallaby

Cody cuddling a koala

We were "warned" by more than one Australian not to bother with Brisbane, but I thought it was a wonderful city with lots to do, lots close by and an all around good vibe.  Our few days there were not enough for me.  Today we head to Melbourne to meet up with Clara and Jon for the next leg of our trip.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Ok, well there haven't been any trains, but we have been on a plane, 2 boats, a sailboat, a taxi, 2 buses,  a minivan and a ferry over the last week. We flew into Cairns last Wednesday and have been on the go ever since. Even now we're on an island and I am writing this from a dodgey coin operated desktop computer that is running the original version of Internet Explorer and will only let me type in HTML for some reason. So excuse the lack of photos and weird things happening with fonts and formatting if I can't quite get that figured out. Upon our arrival in Cairns, we immediately noticed the heat and humidity. We picked up our sweet rental minivan and drove in the dark (because the sun sets around 5:45) to our home for a few days.

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather by spending the next day at Green Island.  We took the boat over and spent the day hanging out on the beach and snorkelling.  While not technically The Great Barrier Reef,  it is Great Barrier Reef adjacent.   We saw sting rays, sea turtles, hundreds of multicoloured fish, coral, anemones, and starfish.   Arra was a bit nervous of the ocean at first, but quickly got over it and then loved swimming and playing in it and of course eating the sand.  I wish i could say she was thrilled with her first boat ride,  but she seemed unimpressed as she slept both ways. 

Arra and Cody loving the ocean.

Our next stop was a full day drive from Cairns to Airlie Beach.   Arra is getting a bit sick of travel days,  but she's a trooper.   Airlie Beach is a tourist town with lots of shops,  bars/restaurants and is a hub for sailing trips to The Great Barrier Reef.   Cody, Carly and Candra set off on a 2 day sailing adventure aboard the Waltzing Matilda while Arra and I had some mommy-daughter bonding time on shore (no babies allowed at sea).  Arra and I saw them off, then headed to the huge Saturday market where you can buy everything you can imagine. We bought some fresh eggs, fruit and vegetables and a mango sorbet to share and wandered through all of the stalls.  We had breakfast together on our patio overlooking the ocean and rainforest.   And our afternoon was spent swimming at The Lagoon.  Our second day was more of the same,  wandering through the shops and more swimming at The Lagoon under the clear sky, next to the perfectly tourquoise ocean, so I can't complain too much about staying ashore.  The sailors all reported a fabulous time on their trip too!

 Sailboats at Airlie Beach

Cody and Carly enjoying their time aboard The Waltzing Matilda

We next piled into our minivan and made our 

way to Hervey Bay.   After a bit of confusion ( through no fault of our own ) we ended up in a taxi, racing to catch the ferry that was being held for us. We made the ferry and enjoyed the short ride to Fraser Island.  We checked into the Kingfisher Bay Resort and made our way through the forest to our 3 bedroom villa.   All the comforts of home with a jacuzzi on the balcony and minutes walk from the ocean.   While on the island we enjoyed a ranger guided nature hike, fishing on the pier, wine and cheese and watching the sunset, and a 4x4  beauty spots tour of the island.  We finished off the visit with date night for Cody and me (thanks aunties!).

Soaking in our balcony jacuzzi

Today we catch the ferry back to shore, rent a new minivan and make the drive to Brisbane. 

P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way

Our first few days in Australia have been spent in the beautifully busy city of Sydney.    Our days are very long and full.  They are long because Arra has decided that she wakes up at 5AM everyday in Australia.  They are full because there is so much to see and do in Sydney and we cram as much as possible into a day.

We have absolutely loved our little place in Bondi and make a point to walk down to the beach everyday.  The area has such a fun, vibrant, yet laid back feel to it that you only find in beach towns.  There was a market set up across from the beach on the weekend, so we stocked up on yummy fresh fruit and veggies one day and browsed all of the clothes and crafty things the next.  The girls made their way out to Bondi one afternoon and we did the coastal cliff walk with the intention of making it all the way to Coogee beach.  This walk along the ocean is absolutely beautiful and has been my favourite part of our trip to date.  We ended up making the executive decision to stop just past Bronte Beach at the Waverley Cemetery, in favour of food and not walking in the dark.  We are not usually known to make such good decisions when out hiking, so I was proud of us.  The added bonus was that I got some time to wander through the cemetery, toted as the most scenic burial ground in the world.  Anyone who knows me knows that a cemetery by the ocean is pretty much my dream come true.

    Family selfie on Bondi Beach.  It was a bit breezy on the water that day.

    Waverly Cemetery 

True to form, a majority of our trip has been focused on food.  On our first day we ventured on to public transit and made our way down to the harbour where we checked out the awesomeness of the Sydney Opera House, then took a walk through the stunning botanical garden where we paused to have a picnic lunch (complete with wine).  Later that day we wandered through The Rocks until we found ourselves at Home where we ate our weight in the best Thai food I have ever had outside of Thailand.  Since we have full cooking facilities at our place we've spent a bit of time cooking and eating in too.  I love all the specialty shops for meats, cheeses, seafood, baked goods, etc. that can be found everywhere, including right in the mall!  We took advantage of Clara's cooking skills a couple of times, having her cook us a beautiful lamb dinner one night at our place and then having us over to her place for Barramundi, a quintessential Australian dish.

    The gang at the Sydney Opera house.

    The Harbour Bridge

Interspersed with all of the eating, we've managed to get some sight seeing in.  Cody has become an excellent backwards driver and successfully gets us from place to place even while we navigate the roads that have no signs and seem to begin and end at random as we continually lose our GPS signal, all the while testing the strength of our marriage.  We spent one whole day in the Blue Mountains taking in the views, waterfalls and literally breathtaking hikes.  Arra caught up on her sleep riding around in her Ergo on Cody's back as we hiked.  There seemed to be an infinite number of trails and places to hike and I'm sure we didn't even scratch the surface.

We spent our last day with just our little family while the girls went on a day trip to visit some wineries (we will have a chance to do this later in Melbourne).  We made our way down to Darling Harbour where we found a great place to park.  We then realized that we had accidentally (don't get me started) ended up parking in a lot that cost $89!? so we decided to really make the most of our day there!  We visited both the aquarium and the zoo and we all loved them both.  I especially loved seeing how much Arra enjoyed them though.  I really wanted to do something that would be for her and this didn't disappoint.  She's so easy going and such a good sport that she just kind of goes along with whatever we're doing.  It was really nice to see how much she loved the animals.  Totally worth an $89 park job.

Today is our last half day in Sydney.  We'll spend it at Bondi Beach and packing up, then we'll head to the airport for our flight to Cairns.  This isn't the last we'll see of Sydney though, we'll be back at the end of our trip!

"There Will Be Sleep Enough in the Grave"

We've made it to Sydney!  Our travel day was long, but went as well as can be expected when flying for 15 hours with a 10 month old.  Which is to say, way, way better than my days of anxiety leading up to the flight warranted.  Arra even slept for a few hours on the plane, so there's a first for everything!  Cody and I, however, did not sleep.  Having a squirmy sleeping baby on you is not very restful and the rest of our time was spent on rousing games of peek a boo and reading The Paper Bag Princess 500 times.  All of our effort to avoid letting Arra be exposed to screen time backfired big time on this trip, as she had zero interest in the iPad games and videos I attempted to entertain her with.

Once we arrived the name of the game was getting basic needs met: food, shelter, transportation, sleep and cell phones.  Clara is the best hostess and met us at the airport, then kindly drove our rental car to our place.  This was especially appreciated because a sleep deprived, hangry Cody driving on the wrong side of the road didn't seem like a great idea.  She also got us public transit passes and SIM cards, so we are all set. Our place at Bondi Beach is perfect for us.  We have all the comforts of home.  We are a little farther from the beach then I though we'd be, but it's still walking distance and who doesn't love long walks in beautiful weather?  So, it's a win-win!  

The rest of our day was spent getting settled, catching a 5 hour cat nap and taking a little walk to the corner store in our neighbourhood to get some essentials.  Tomorrow we begin exploring the city!

And now...Sleep!

"Packing is my Pet Hate"

So, we're preparing for our first "big" trip in a long while.  Cody and I are experienced travellers, but somehow the extra 20 pounds we're bringing with us this trip is making the whole thing a little more daunting.  Australia will be the 13th country I've visited, the 10th Cody has been to, and Arra's 3rd.  If we look at it as a countries per years alive comparison, she's got us beat!  This upcoming week will be Cody working 24 hours a day to finish up the last concrete projects of the season while I obsess over the 2 page long packing list I've created and randomly toss items into our office whenever they might pop into my mind.  We don't actually leave until the 17th, but we're headed to Edmonton early so Cody can fly out of there to go on a mini mancation to San Francisco.  Nothing like cramming in as much travel as possible!  Anyway, if you've come this far, thanks for tuning into my first attempt at a blog.  I hope you'll follow along with us for our four weeks to The Land Down Under! (I'm sure Australians hate that.)