...and a few cellphone photos to finish the weekend

This afternoon we headed up to Tai Tam Reservoir for a short walk - partly to get Bunky out and about, and partly to test drive one of those baby backpacks that someone had kindly given us. We discovered two things on our walk.  Firstly (apparently not a real word, but I'm using it anyway), it appears to be rather comfortable in the backpack:

.

sleepy.

.

Secondly (also not a real word but I'm using it anyway) and probably more importantly... Bunky seems to have taken a shining to ice cream:

.

icecream.

.

Saturday: Tears and Beers

Saturday was a funny day - we went to gorgeous little Ava's first birthday party in Kennedy Town, where Bunky proceeded to burst into tears every 15-20 seconds.  Someone nudged him - tears and wailing.  Dropped a toy - tears and wailing.  Someone looked at him in a funny way - tears and wailing.  It was most uncharacteristic of the little munchkin, and we can only really put it down to it being a little bit loud for him.  Or he's a bit of a wuss.  Probably too early to definitively tell on that front. Anyway, a few photos of the beautiful little birthday girl (oh - that's George's curly hair on the left in the first photo...the only photo of him not crying):

.

DSC_3303

ava_triptych.

.

In the evening we went to Sam and Mary's for pre-Christmas drinks. Had a lovely time and a great meal - and Sam and Mary had even organised a secret santa for everyone as well.  They're about to take Christmas Holidays closely followed by a short sabbatical holiday, so we won't see them again until around April next year.  We met some lovely people, including a Canadian vet whose cousin I worked with in Canada in 1997.  It's a small, small world...

.

DSC_3358

DSC_3322dubble

DSC_3316

DSC_3319dubble

DSC_3345.

.

A few more weekend photos

This one from Central - I took it looking down the road where the wet markets begin: .

DSC_2908_2.

.

A friend of Shay (in Emma's baby group) was looking for someone to take a few photos of her children, so after a few back and forth emails, we met at Cyberport on Saturday afternoon to see if we could get a few photos done.  After the boys had a quick rock-throwing session in the Cyberport fake-creek, we ended up having a great time and getting some lovely photos out of the session (they even managed to sit still long enough for me to get a few photos of them with their little sister, who at the tender age of 9 months old obviously couldn't keep up with her big brothers):

.

DSC_3112duo

DSC_3019four.

.

Photos from my phone yesterday

May and Bunky came to play on the grass outside my work yesterday, so I got to spend 10 minutes hanging out with him on the grass in the sun on a Friday afternoon - just lovely.  I took a few photos on my phone.  Aren't his cheeks looking... "healthy"? .

photocyb.

.

George's first word

.

Screen shot 2009-12-04 at 8.09.09 AM.

Much to his mother's disappointment, George knocked out his first word this morning.  Never mind that he didn't know what it meant (heck - I do that all of the time), he repeated it back to me, and when I made a different noise, then said "dada" again, he repeated the other noise back to me, and then followed it up with "dada" (much to Rachel's disgust).

The conversation went a bit like this:

Daddy: "Dada?"

Bunky: "Dada."

Daddy: "Hssssssch!"

Bunky: "Hssssssch!"

Daddy: "Dada?"

Bunky: "Dada."

Daddy: "Hahaaaa! First word! Dada!"

Rachel: (Picking up Bunky and walking away) "Rubbish.  George, say Mama?"

Bunky: "Dada!"

.

Today is a good day...

.

photo-1Photo taken on Rachel's phone (Wednesday)

.

.

Random photos from Chez Bunky this morning

A few photos from the morning routine of the Bunkmeister.  Firstly, his mummy decided that his eating was getting a little bit... how do we say... "animated", and his clothes were coming off pretty badly after mealtimes (especially mealtimes involving sauces).  An afternoon trip to Ikea yielded a number of new mass-produced and flatpacked Swedish goods, one of which was some sort of overcoat which was bound to make Bunky look like either an air traffic controller or a construction worker.  The aim of the bright green jacket was of course to protect his blessed-by-Nepalese-monks-pure-merino clothing underneath. I guess it worked, but someone was less than impressed with its first outing: .

DSC_2892Ok, looking a bit too much like a Grandpa Paddy cycling jacket, but so far so good...

.

DSC_2894...and not enjoying it as much.

.

.

And here are a few random ones from crawling time - he's just discovered the gate between the lounge and the kitchen (we have an open pantry in there, so to minimise the risk of him ending up under a pile of tinned tomatoes and blending appliances, he's not allowed in the kichen.  Like his Daddy.)

.

DSC_2900Note the puppy dog eyes on the bottom right. It didn't work (it was a close one though)

.

.

And I leave you with one of Osama Ben-Jamin.  Discovered this week that despite him treating May like his mortal enemy, whenever George cries, Ben comes running and miaowing. It's quite sweet (but he's still a little brat).

.

DSC_2877.

.

Random morning photo

Just a little one of Bunky crawling about by the coffee table this morning.  His margin of error (from the top of his head to the underside of the coffee table) is about 0.003mm, which led to a few scary moments. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand "BE CAREFUL!", so he 'll no doubt learn the hard way in the near future... (I'll take photos, don't worry) .

DSC_2866.

.

Backseat Bunky

I took a load of photos today - we went out for a walk with the Binningtons. We did the Deepwater Bay to Repulse Day walk again. It was lovely and warm, but not too hot - and we finished it off with yet another great meal at Coco Thai.  I haven't pulled any photos off the camera yet, but I'll see what I've got on there later in the week.  In the meantime, you get a few of the little man sitting in his throne in the backseat.  These were taken at some traffic lights before Aberdeen, about 5 minutes drive from our house (I took them on my phone, so the quality isn't crash hot). .

bunky_backseat.

.

Tears, coffee

A good day of play and shopping for the little Bunkster, although during his lunchtime nap, his butt trumpet ejected some of the most evil sludge I have ever seen. Gross, little dude, gross. Shot into town to pick up some bits and pieces, got our car washed at the underground carpark (pretty clever service offered there - and it seemed that they had no shortage of takers either), and then stopped at Fuel (the HK branch of the Wellington cafe) to say hi to Sanjay and have a rather magnificent coffee. Note they're already doing rather well - check this out.

Right - a few photos from the day:

.

DSC_2823Some random dude at Fuel this afternoon

.

Fuel_4A few more of Fuel (I took these for Sanjay a while ago - but I don't think I've uploaded them here before)

.

DSC_2808 The photograph that will be accompanying my "Father of the Year" entry form

.

.

A few random phone photos and a pre-breakfast window stare

A few completely random photos from my phone: .

IMG_0127I took this in near darkness - it's Ben and Poppy on the back of our couch.  Surely this can't be comfortable for poor little squashed Pop?

.

.

IMG_0121I couldn't resist - this is from one of the toilets of the Cathay Pacific plane we flew on over the weekend.  Is "choke" really the word they were looking for?

.

.

DSC_2728This is from this morning - it looks posed, but I promise it wasn't.  I just wanted Rachel to hold still, and for some reason they both ended up looking out the window.  It doesn't take much to get George's attention (birds, ships, pieces of toast and random dust particles are all rather exciting to him), but I'm not entirely sure what Rachel was looking at...

.

.

Random Singapore photo

This one was a bit unexpected - Robin, Paddy and I went to pick up the pizzas on Saturday night, and since they don't have a car - and delivery would have taken 90 minutes - we ended up walking to the pizza place. I took my camera along and ended up getting this shot of traffic on Scotts Road.  I completely forgot about it until just now, and while Rachel watched "Private Practice", I tweaked it a little (bumping the contrast up a little) and gave it a black border on the top and bottom sides (for some reason I think street scenes look better with the borders - it's a personal thing).  Finally, the black part on the top right was just begging for a caption.  So here you are: .

DSC_2698scotts_road.

.