Welcome to my new blog!

Here we are - in a new city (Brisbane), in a new home, starting our new life... and to mark this new beginning, I've decided to start my new blog. :)

My old blog at MSN was beginning to annoy and frustrate me with it's lack of versatility... MSN Live Spaces is very easy to use and intuitive, but it was time for me to step up in the world of blogging ... The "fun" thing about blogger is that I can muck around with my blog template and dabble in some html/xml stuff... so it's a fun in a technical kind of way... makes me feel like I'm not losing all my technical skills.. Geeky I hear you say? Definitely... but I can't help it... :)

One of the advantages of my new blog - you can subscribe to it and get email updates... :) Just scroll down and sign up in the sidebar on the right. I hear you all madly clicking and clambering to sign up... :p

Okay... so a brief rundown on our journey here...

This morning, I woke Beth up at 5:30am for a nice early start... I was trying to shift all her naps to the left a little so that she wouldn't be over tired on the plane trip at 4pm.... so she ended up napping at 8:15am... waking at 10am and then napping again 1pm and waking at 2:15pm... So I was very happy with how her naps panned out. Beth was very cute this morning... standing on the rug (sans mattress) all by herself... following Chu Phong around... crawling and sitting in front of Chu Phi's room waiting for him to wake up... :)... Watching the fish one last time with Ong Noi... Enjoying eating banh tieu with Ba Noi...

I was feeling a bit "meh" all around... Mixed emotions of looking forward to being with Phan and seeing our new home.... sad that we were leaving family just as Beth was getting used to everybody... and anxious about the flying alone with just Beth to Brisbane...

The airport was sad... Bao started bawling way too early, so I had to not look at her otherwise I was going to cry.... Lots of photo taking going on from everybody... and Beth seemed oblivious to it all and was just happy and determined to walk around and make everybody hold her hand and walk around with her! Very cute and funny.
The boarding call came way too soon... and I had tears in my eyes but managed to hold them back... Beth looked a little sad too... I wonder what she'll be like tomorrow morning when she wakes up and discovers there is no Ong Noi or Chu Phong to harrass.. :)

Well, all my anxiousness about the flight turned out to be unfounded. Beth handled the flight exceptionally well... didn't cry once... She was persistently trying to rummage through the seat pocket in front of us... loved playing with the little freddo frog pencil case thing-y we got (complimentary entertaintment pack for the kiddies)... She sucked on her bottle of water on take off and sang to her in her ear and she was fine. Then once we were in the air, she just ate *constantly* - arrowroot biscuit, orange, muesli bar... some craisins I had in my snack pack... She sat on my lap for the most part... standing on my lap when she got a bit annoyed and trying to peer through the gap in the seats to see the people in front of us. We had one mishap about 30 minutes into the flight when Beth's nappy leaked! She was sitting on my lap and I felt something warm... and then I felt something wet! She had pee-ed and it had gone through her nappy and clothes and onto my jeans. Lucky I had packed a spare set of clothes (which I almost didn't!) and there was no queue to use the toilet, so I ducked in quickly and changed her nappy... didn't help the little wet spots on my jeans, but they weren't too big and they ended up drying.

At about the 80-90 minute mark (the flight is 2 hours 10 minutes), one of the air hostesses came and said hello and held her arms out... and next thing your know Beth put her arms out and went with her happily. I can't believe she let a complete stranger hold her for 10 minutes! (And only came back 'cos she had to and we were starting the descent!) When I mentioned to the air hostess that Beth doesn't normally like strangers, she said "I get that alot... I figure, most babies must just get desperate to go out of the seat that they are happy to go with anyone!" So true I think! Landing... which takes much longer (about 1/2 an hour)... was a bit trickier 'cos Beth didn't want to sit still and was getting sick of her bottle of water, but I gave her some arrowroot biscuit and tried to alternate that with the water and that kind of worked... our landing was very bumpy, which I think spooked Beth into sitting still for 5 minutes!

I have more to write, but I am starting to feel a bit dizzy... so I think I'll stop here and resume tomorrow... I'm pretty tired from the early start!

I do have one last thing to write though - I really like our new home... it'll be great once everything is put away... but this hilarious thing happened tonight... Phan and I were downstairs tidying up stuff when we hear this strange pig like squealing sound outside in the backyard... like a feral pig... Phan gets a torch and shines it outside and finds a possum on the fence... we think it fell out of a tree and that's why it squealed... it's bizarre... we're only 5km from the CBD, but things like that plus the lizards that are around and apparently the massive spiders make me feel like we're out in the sticks! It will take some adjusting!

Okay... really need to grab some zzzs.... Thanks for reading and love you all!