Munchkin, Muriwai, Mum and Me...

One thing is for sure about your first year of parenting - it takes time getting used to the amount of planning that goes into a family outing. In the first few months it's actually hard to leave the house, I think Saads never made it more than a few blocks from our place and Liam during the first six weeks of his life. I blazed a trail between home, work and the supermarket and that was it. But the bright side is that you definitely get better at it, you get the routine down pat, and big days out and about as a family begin.

Today was one of those days for us, I think we'll have many more this summer, we did all the housework early, and then we topped up Liam's day back, chucked the baby backpack (my first baby purchase - today was its first use) in the car and headed off for some small adventure. We ended up going out to Muriwai Beach, somewhere I've been wanting to get to for a while, to see the gannet colony during breeding season. They were beautiful, but man, what a stench. Muriwai was spectacular west coast black sand shores, cliffs and coastal rainforests - an amazing spot to have a wander around on a warm November day. Best of all Liam loves his new mode of transport - lucky for us - because we have great plans and schemes to cover lots of ground in it. Looks pretty dapper in his little sunhat too - though possibly a little Cypress Hill...