Declan at 9 months making leaps and bounds

Hi all, its quite hard to get a pic of Declan that includes his brand new teeth without making him look a bit weird. For this pic we had to wrestle him down to the ground and apply the electrodes. Hence the goofy expression. But you can see those teeth!

He has four teeth now - two on top and two on bottom, but no sign of others yet so maybe we will get a bit of sleep (not that he's been that bad really).

We've also posted a new gallery of pics from the last month or so including Marg's visit to London and Paul and Robyn who were living here but have now returned to Queensland for keeps. Good luck with the thermal shock guys.

And best of all, we've posted some video of Declan crawling! Hope the video file is not too huge. If its too much of a pain to download let us know and we'll chop it down.

Yes the young man is progressing in leaps and bounds. At this very moment as I type he has crawled across the room and is busy consuming a copy of Crime and Punishment that he stole from our bookshelf. Does this augur badly for his future crawling-enabled misdemeanors? Only time will tell.

His progress to date includes: crawling, feeding himself finger food, waving back in response to a hello, calling me 'Daddy' when he sees me across the room, standing up very confidently when he can hold onto something for balance, and stepping around if you keep him upright. It's amazing how quickly he is learning new things.

We've just booked some tickets to visit Petr and her family in Athens before Christmas, and will be going to Amsterdam for New Year with Anneke, then to Paris in early January for Phil's traditional birthday visit and hopefully a visit to Mil. It's all go I tells you.