Happy Wedding Anniversary!

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to wish my Mummy and Daddy a happy wedding anniversary for Wednesday. They have been married for two whole years now! They were both feeling pretty sick so they didn't celebrate much on that day, but they did leave me with Nanny and go and see some nice paintings the other day. They took some silly pictures of themselves too!

Easter Camp

For Max's first Easter, the Batkin family went up to Mapleton for Easter Camp, along with about 200 other Nazarenes from the church in Logan that we attend.
Easter Camp is always heaps of fun and involves great speakers, fun games, awesome worship, delicious food and of course a fantastic opportunity to spend time talking and having fun with everyone else. Max enjoyed most of these things, although he did sleep through some of the speaker's sessions or opt for the creche class instead. Cam and I enjoyed all of those things when not looking after Max, and Cam did a wonderful job as co-leader of our team Bling Bling!

Unfortunately, Max was a little (actually more than a little) grumpy over the weekend, since he chose this Easter as the time to break out not one, not two, but three new teeth! Once I discovered the first one I was a little more understanding of his attitude and made sure to give him plenty of paracetamol and bongella which cheered him up a little bit. So although Max did his share of screaming at me and various other kind hearted people wanting to hold him for a bit, we now know that he had good reason for this. And he did have some good times as well. He had his first go on a swing, which he thoroughly enjoyed and even gave out some very cute chuckles of delight. I think he mostly enjoyed watching and playing with the other kids. He loved to clap his hands, and encouraged them to join him. He also had fun dancing on the spot while they held his hands so he could stand, and had fun crawling around after them as well.

It is becoming a bit of a tradition of Easter Camp to have a surprise wedding on Easter Sunday, since this year is now the second in a row with Rachel and Charles surprising everyone by turning up in beautiful wedding outfits on Sunday afternoon. Here's Max and I at the ceremony, with Max exploring those new teeth of his.


Overall our Easter weekend was a great one and I think we all enjoyed it. We're looking forward to going back next year when Max will be able to have even more fun, since he should be running all over the place by then and getting into even more mischief.

Playmates and visitors

After doing so much visiting of others lately, last weekend it was time for the visitors to come to us.
On Friday Aunty Amy and the twins came over for their fortnightly visit, and since Cam and I had tickets for the Andy Warhol exhibition that evening, Nanny also came down on the train to babysit for us.

So Max had lots of playmates and admirers, and we had a good ratio of adults to babies. The little ones had fun playing together and everyone was mostly cheerful.
One of Gabbie's favourite tricks is to come over and steal Max's dummy, so by way of revenge he decided to use her head as support while he stood up.

Poor Gabbie didn't like that much. Elke and Max got on quite well and I don't either managed to be too violent towards the other. They look like good friends here.


And here are the aunties and cousins all together, since I don't think we had any photos like this yet.


After Amy and the girls went home Max had lots of fun playing with his Nanna until Cam and I went out, and then Nanna put him to bed and he didn't stir again until morning. What a good boy!

The next day Max went for a short walk in the pram with his Nanna before she had to go back home on the train.

Vegemite on toast!

Max LOVES to eat anything that he can feed himself. So now he has half a piece of vegemite toast for breakfast along with his fruit and cereal, which he evidently enjoys immensely.

Bed hair

This morning when I got Max out of bed he had a very impressive mohawk. See?

Look out here I come!

Max's crawling has improved so much in the last few days that I think we can now safely say that he can do it. He still doesn't go long distances but manages to get to things that interest him, get close enough so that he can pull himself up on furniture and stand, and he can follow me around the house while I'm in sight.

I'm sure he will only get more confident, and as he does we will need to baby-proof more and more of our house!



Congratulations Max!

More Visiting!

Last weekend Max and I had originally planned to go out and visit his Grandma and Grandpa while Cam was on a youth camp. However, by Friday Cam was feeling too rundown, tired and sick to be of much use on camp and so we all headed out to the farm for a relaxing weekend.

Grandma and Grandpa were very excited to see Max since it had been a couple of months since our last visit. Those few months have seen Max grow and learn and make a lot of progress, so he was proud to show off his latest achievements and they enjoyed the chance for more interaction with him.

By coincidence, the Millmerran show was on last weekend as well, so on Saturday we went along for a look.
Max was a little tired when we got there, and quickly went to sleep in the pram while we wandered around and checked out the baking, vegetable growing and photography competitions, the hotted up utes, saw some snake handling and watched a bit of the sheepdog trials.
He woke up in time to say hello to some friends we met there, as well as these prize-winning sheep.

On Sunday morning we all went along to Yandilla church. Max was very well behaved for the service and barely made a peep. He slept soundly through the sermon on Harvest Thanksgiving which meant that I was able to stay inside and listen to it, which I enjoyed.
Afterwards during morning tea there was no shortage of people wanting to admire Max and give him a cuddle. Here he is with his great-grandma, known to everyone as Ma. He also had a good time eating little pieces of everyone else's morning tea and trying to eat various people's glasses and watches, which he loves to grab.

The rest of Sunday we spent just relaxing at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We continued to encourage Max to crawl, which he has been steadily improving at for the last couple of weeks. He is getting more and more confident and will now keep going for more than just a few steps. We think the larger carpeted areas at both Nanny and Poppy and Grandma and Grandpa's houses have helped his confidence.

Here's Max enjoying one last cuddle with Grandma and Grandpa before we packed up and headed back to Brisbane.
On the way back we stopped in Toowoomba to visit my Grandma, who was recently in hospital after being hit by a (slow-moving) car. She is doing fine except for a wound on her leg, and she and my Grandpa were very excited to see Max.
He obligingly showed off all of his new tricks, such as clapping his hands, giving high-fives, pretending to be an Indian, crawling short distances
and standing and walking while I hold his hands.
He also managed to eat a whole arrowroot biscuit, which he loved to eat since he was able to feed himself.

After a short visit we left Toowoomba and made our way back to Brisbane and had a relaxing Sunday evening to end our relaxing weekend out at the farm.