It's been awhile since I've done an Evie update. I want to keep blogging about Evie's milestones as a record for us and for Evie. I turned the first year of fushmush Evie posts into a baby book for her. Evie loves looking through the book though she doesn't understand that it's her. When you ask who is in the photos she says "baby!".

Evie's new catch phrase is "by myself". She likes to walk down the stairs "by myself", eat yoghurt "by myself" and build duplo towers "by myself". She's also started to want to read her bedtime stories "by myself". It's so cute. All her stories start "Once upon a day....".

Unfortunately, "by myself" sometimes turns into shouting and crying. She gets really frustrated if she isn't able to do it independently and she won't accept my help. Ah, the joys of toddlerhood.

Evie has also picked up Mummy's habit of using over the top adjectives to describe situations. The other morning when I was talking about what we would do that morning - nappy change, breakfast, play with Duplo farm - Evie responded with "perfect!". She murmurs "mmm delicious...." to herself as she eats the most ordinary of meals (at least she enjoys Mummy's cooking!). The other day Evie decided that "Awesome!" was going to be her new word of the day. I rang Andrew so she could tell Daddy "awesome!" on the phone. It's my fault as I tend to overuse that particular word.

Living on the third floor has certainly helped Evie learn how to count. We often count the stairs on each flight as we walk down to the ground floor. Evie's had 1 to 10 down for a bit but she surprised us the other day by continuing up to 14. We read lots of books which count through the numbers 1 to 10 but we haven't really focused on anything after 10. I'm always at amazed at how quickly and easily they pick new things up. She's picked up the numbers after 10 from somewhere.

With the number of photos we take we may have created a little attention seeker. Evie often stops and says "Mummy. Photo please." She then happily poses, says "cheese" and will run over to look at the photo. The result is 5 million photos on my iphone which look like this. Evie doesn't quite understand that it's the "eeeeeese" part of cheese which makes the smile.

However, here is a nice photo requested by Evie where she actually managed to smile.

Read the rest of the Growing Evie posts here.

I know New Year's Eve was a long time ago but I have one more story to share.

While we were away we hit up what is apparently Port Stephen's number one tourist attraction the Australian Shark and Ray Centre. The highlight of the centre is that you can feed the sharks and rays that live there. You can even pay a little extra to jump in the water with them. We opted for the dry experience though.

The rays were pretty keen to eat and would propel themselves out of the water trying to get the food. We were instructed by the staff at the centre to tease them rather then feed them lest they get too fat and lazy.

I think we went a little early on this one. Evie was a little young to appreciate it and at $30 a head it was a little exey. I think an older child (5 - 10) would love it though and the "wet experience" looks like lots of fun.

It did lead to one of my favourite photos from our week away though. Stingray feeding led to a conversation about the "stingray photobomb" (if you don't know what this is go here, you sheltered, sheltered people). Stingray photobomb was then used in our game of (fruit) salad bowl which then led to this funny photo of Sue and Clare. The pavlova stingray photobomb is the new photobomb. Somehow I don't think it's going to catch on.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

I owe you a proper Evie post. I was so good at documenting Evie's first year. I really like to look back over the photos and posts. It's amazing to see how much my little girl has grown.

Since then I've been really slack. I want to do an 18-month post and update you with all of Evie's latest tricks. Unfortunately, I can't muster the energy to think this evening. I've had a few more days of teaching work this week and I'm exhausted. It's nice to actually be using what I've learned from my studies but it's tiring! I also haven't figured out how to manage the whole working / looking after a toddler / running a household thing. When I work our house falls apart. I really admire all the families who have both parents working. I don't know how you do it all.

So instead of a proper Evie post I'll leave you with this photo of Audrey and Evie. Annie has been looking after Evie sometimes while I work so I owed her big on babysitting hours. On Tuesday, I had both the girls for half a day. I took them to the park for a bit and then for morning tea at Bitton. In this photo they are showing me how well they jump which is why Evie looks huge compared to Audrey (Evie is standing on her toes).

On Tuesday, I totally paid back at least a full day's worth of babysitting to Annie. There was an incident but it's not something you write about on websites unless you want to get submitted to STFUParents. Suffice to say Audrey required a bath in the middle of the day and I had to wipe myself down with several wet wipes.

Evie's 18-month post is coming soon. I promise!

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Some more family photos from Byron. Can you tell that I quite liked the back deck steps as a place for photographs?

I captured this photo of the Wilson boys on Ben's 40th birthday. While I snapped away, Isaac sat proudly holding the 40th birthday card with a big smile on his face. (I think using the card as a prop was his idea too.) He looked like he belonged in some kind of childrenswear catalogue.

So I called out, "Now pretend you're in a KMart catalogue!" This was the result....

Isaac really could be in a KMart catalogue!

Here are some more lovely family photos from our Byron trip. What a good looking family!