An Eventful Week

The past week has been quite eventful. 

Friday evening Julia and I (Yasmin) were going to the footy so that Julia could experience Australian Football at the MCG - the biggest stadium with room for more than 100.000 spectators. Of course we had picked a game where St Kilda was playing so that I could go and watch a live game of my team. 

Unfortunately, we arrived a bit late because we had to wait for Kasper to come home from work to look after Oscar before we could leave. However, when we arrived, St Kilda was actually in front (they were playing against Collingwood), so we were quite excited!! Unfortunately, once the 2nd quarter started Saints quickly lost their lead and Collingwood ended up winning :-( 

St Kilda scored a rare goal

But it was fun for Julia to experience the "game day" atmosphere at the stadium, and she was quite excited by the game and the antics of the spectators. As she said, there was lots of action and it was definitely not boring to watch a footy match compared to soccer :-) So I think there is a chance we might go and see a few matches while she is here!

Saturday evening Karina, Shayne and Oliver came to visit to see our new house. We had a nice Mexican themed dinner party with everyone participating - Karina brought a starter platter, then I made chicken and beef fajitas for main, and Julia made some strawberry quesadillas with ice cream for dessert. Good to catch up before Karina is due to give birth again at the end of May and also get the latest news on their new house which they are building at the moment.

Saturday night I felt a little like I was getting a sore throat, and Sunday I was really bad with stuffy nose, coughing and fever - hello stupid flu! So Kasper ended up being on Oscar duty Sunday, follow by Julia on Oscar duty Monday and Tuesday before I was finally in a condition to look after Oscar again Wednesday. However by Wednesday, Oscar had also caught the cold - poor little man! 

Wednesday we were booked in for our passport session at Denmark House in the city. I needed to get my passport renewed, and we needed to get a passport for Oscar. So this was Oscar's first trip to the big smoke - Melbourne City! When a child gets a passport, both parents have to show up, so Kasper met us at Denmark House. Luckily, he was attending a conference in the city on Wednesday, so it was just a short tram trip for him to meet Oscar and I there. A thank you to Daniel is in order for magically fixing up a photo of Oscar we could use for the passport photo! 

Oscar's passport photo :-)

After our applications had been handed in, Kasper suggested we have lunch before he went back to the conference. So we found this nice Japanese restaurant where Kasper could get a nice curry and wifey could get some sashimi and sushi - YUM!

Oscar and daddy at lunch (and some of mummy's yummy food)

After lunch, Oscar and I went shopping in H&M and GAP to find some new clothes for Oscar as he has now grown out of all his 3-6 months clothes, and desperately needed some new bodysuits. Luckily we found some very nice stuff before we legged it back through the city to Crown where we were parked and went back home just in time before peak-hour traffic started!

Oscar with mummy on shopping trip

Then on Friday, Oscar and I AGAIN had to go to Melbourne to see the art performance Rain (for babies) at Melbourne Arts Centre. We had booked a time with 2 other mums/babies from our mother's group, so it was a nice little catch up as well. We left home in good time to have a nice stroll along the Yarra river and have a leisurely lunch before the performance at 1.30PM. 

Here is a link to the performance 
The performance lasted about 45 minutes, and was very fascinating for the babies! Scenary was set up to resemble "rain", and there were 3 performers singing and playing while moving around and touching the babies. During and after the performance all the babies were allowed to crawl around and play with the props (big balloons filled with a bit of water they could push around + stuff hanging from the ceiling that they could play with. Lighting was also a factor with dark surroundings and some "glow in the dark" features. Unfortunately, Oscar got a bit grizzly at the end because he was getting tired, so we left quite quickly as he sleeps best in the pram when it is moving.

By the time we left Melbourne, it was unfortunately well into peak hour traffic, so we were parked for about 15 min just to get onto the freeway :-( That made for one very hungry and screaming Oscar most of the way home in the car.... 

Friday night, and Julia and Kasper now both have a sore throat, so it seems the whole family ended up catching my cold despite my best efforts to avoid giving it to anyone!

Operation Passport Photo

There are many rules that you have to adhere to when taking a passport photo - even if you are a little baby! That makes for some very funny attempts at taking the right passport photo of Oscar, who as the only one in the family (currently) can get both a Danish and an Australian passport. This will of course change when the law of dual citizenship in Denmark comes into action on 1st September this year, when the whole family can then happily apply for dual citizenship and Australian passports.

However, as we are going on holidays later this year, we do need to have a passport made for Oscar.

Back to the passport photo rules...
* the picture must have good likeness to the child
* the picture must be taken from the front
* format should be 35 x 45mm
* head must be between 30-36mm from chin to hairtop
* you cannot have more than one person in the picture, so Oscar cannot sit on our lap to have his photo taken.
* the person must be centered in the photo
* the picture cannot be too light or too dark
* there cannot be any shadows on the face or the background
* the person cannot wear a hat
* eyes cannot be covered by hair or be closed
* the mouth needs to be closed

Well, that's easy!! :-S

Here are some of our (funny) attempts...

Woo-hoo, hands in the air

What's that over there?

Looking right at you mummy! (unfortunately with open mouth)

This chair is moving!!

Ha ha ha mummy :-)

What? I can't talk?!

This chair is not that comfortable...

OK, I'm looking at the camera, closing my mouth - and
mummy managed to get a shadow on the wall behind me!

Is that Bailey over there?

So as you can see, it was a bit of a task. I managed to get a couple of good pictures, but when we tried to transfer to a memory stick so that Julia could photoshop part of the high chair out of the picture, the images somehow got lost :-(

So one of these coming days we'll do a take 2 on passport photo, as we need to have them finished by 22nd April...