Category Archives: The Kids

Postnotes

Well, I don’t know how many of you read the comments on yesterday’s post, but I have to say, Mum totally blew my story on the snoring 😆 I was, of course, trying to implicate OtherHalf’s genetic influence there. S’far as I know, I don’t snore, other than when I’m sick or um… under the influence. But you should hear the night-symphony that takes place whenever a bunch of OtherHalf’s male family members get together (Easter Camp, usually). It’s hilarious. And now Niamh can join in :giggle:

On another postnote, I realise now that I forgot to acknowledge the occasion yesterday – it was, in fact, Niamh’s not-birthday. D-day. The day of my scheduled c-section. I didn’t forget about it, you can be sure of that – as I was woken up at 6.45am, and realised that I was due in admissions by that time, I thanked her once more for arriving early. Funny that by today I should have a one-day old baby, but in fact I have a three-week old instead 🙂

Solstice

Every year, I think it would be wonderful to celebrate Midwinter with a traditional Yuletide bash, all the trimmings included (Christmas being not quite the same thing, at this end of the world!) Every year, I manage to not-quite-get-around-to-it. This year, of course, I do have a slightly better excuse than previously. Though Niamh and I did ‘celebrate’ into the wee hours of the longest night of the year – she enjoyed many a drink, and I collapsed in a heap at the end of it all. Sigh…

As I write this, we are once again deep into the cluster/comfort feeding hours. I know this will come to an end, truly I do. I know it won’t be long until I enjoy the delights of a full night’s sleep again. It’s just so difficult to see through that tunnel right now.

Thank the Powers That Be for late night Tim Tams! (Did you know they’re now available in choc-orange flavour? Yummy 🙂 )

And now, lest you think that all I ever do is complain (and lest she ever grows up to read my blog!) – the lovelier side of Niamh. She truly is a different creature from Finn. Not that he isn’t a gentle and beautiful person now, of course, but jinkies we went through hell in his first several weeks. Niamh is altogether a calmer baby – she rarely cries, ‘cept for a plaintive wail or two if I’m a bit delayed in ‘getting dinner ready’! Excepting these late evening hours, she largely self-settles, unlike her big brother, who required hours upon hours of rocking, pacing and patting before he would sleep at this age. And even during this ‘fussy’ time, she is mostly quiet – just so, so awake! She just wants to feed and feed and feed – making up for her tininess to begin with, I think. At today’s weigh-in she was up 435g on a week ago 😯

She is also, however, the noisiest sleeper I have ever come across. And we know whose side of the family that comes from, don’t we?!

Just Briefly

Both babes are a-slumber, I’m on my way there shortly (I hope), and I’ve finished my evening routine of slathering dozens of lotions and potions onto various parts of my body (pharmacies must love new mothers and babies!) So I thought I’d pop in here and offer you a few happy shots:
Niamh6Days
Babies
FunnyFaces
Babies2
There was going to be some stitching in my life today (the chart I’m stitching for Leslie arrived yesterday) but somehow I just didn’t get to it. Perhaps tomorrow…

No Jiggety Jig

Well, we’re home again, home again, jiggety jig, as they say. Though on account of my stitches, more likely ‘no jiggety jig’, as Finn always insists :giggle:

The news, in very brief…

In true Small fashion, she decided to rebel against all plans, and arrive a little early. Almost three weeks, actually, and boy, we were so not ready! But yay, I got to have my VBAC after all! Brief gory details: my waters broke Friday night and the hospital admitted me with the intention of going into surgery the following morning if labour didn’t come on naturally. It did. It was (relatively) fast and seriously unpleasant, as she was posterior. By the time I got an epidural, I was already fully dilated, but I’m not sure I could have successfully survived the rest without it – in another measure of conservatism on the part of the hospital, I was given a 1-hour-pushing ultimatum. From there it would have been straight to theatre. Let me tell you, that worked wonders for my motivation – I sure as heck got her out in an hour… but just! Small was born on June 3rd, 11.05am.

The girl herself is (of course) just beautiful, and true to name, and contrary to the double-chinned photo OtherHalf posted, she’s Small, at just 2.87kg (6lb 5oz)! So much tinier than Finn was, at 3.78kg (8lb 5oz).

It seems the other cat is already out of the bag – no doubt I let it slip more places than I realised 🙂 Finn’s new baby sister is Niamh Mary. For the curious, and I know you all are, Niamh is pronounced ‘Neeve’, and comes from Celtic Mythology – Niamh of the Golden Hair, daughter of Mannanan, the Celtic God of the sea. I’ll let you Google the rest of the story if you’re interested 🙂 Mary is for OtherHalf’s mother who I never knew – she died from cancer many years ago. June 3rd was also Mary’s birthday (and, coincidentally and quite sadly, her death-day), so it seemed appropriate for us to choose ‘Mary’ for a second name instead of ‘Sara’ as originally planned.

So yes. I had a rather interesting weekend! Thank you everybody for such wonderful wishes, I appreciate each and every one of you, and I’ll be back soon with more attractive pictures!

By the way… You’ll like this. Completely appropriately, my waters broke while I was sitting stitching my latest start – ‘You were hatched’, by TW! I’ll show you a WIP when I get a chance.

Special Request

Melanie asked me to post this. Who am I to refuse a woman who has just given birth?!

niamh

Too Late – Tainted

About that ‘not wanting to taint child with bad language’ thing. Seems I not only have to be careful what I say now, but also with what I read. Just now I was checking out various updated blogs and sites from my RSS list… and popped over to Go Fug Yourself to check out the latest. A minute or so later, small voice beside me pops up

“FUG ME!”

(which is written on a button on the left side of the site, if you’re wondering)

Yes dear readers, the boy can read. We are all in trouble now! Thankfully he didn’t require me to explain what ‘fug’ means, he was too amused by me splitting my sides laughing at him :giggle:

The Awesome Brain

Ok, I admit, this is a bit of a mummy-brag here, so if you don’t like that kind of stuff, read no further!

But it’s also a marvel about the human brain. I can’t really fathom the leap that Finn’s brain made today, all by itself. I don’t know how this works!

I’ve been dyeing some more floss these last couple of days (yay). Today when I was hanging a bunch out to dry, Finn decided to count them all – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Ok, good. Then he decides that since they’re each hanging in a way so that two ‘legs’ hang down (from the middle, like an inverted ‘U’), that he would count all the legs. 1, 2, 3, 4…. up to 20. Excellent. So, being the marvellous educator I am, I confirmed for him ‘two groups of ten, that’s twenty’. (Well, technically 10 groups of 2, but who’s being picky?!)

That’s not the amazing bit. The amazing bit is that without missing a beat, this three year old of mine then pipes up ‘three groups of ten is thirty, and four groups of ten is fourty, and five groups of ten is fifty…’! I had to pick my jaw up off the floor, I tell you. That means his mind effectively made the connection that the ‘…ty’ end of a number indicates ‘…groups of ten’. Wow 😮 !

Brains are awesome things. I should have stayed in research after all!

Resurfacing

Ahem. Hello! Remember me?

Sorry. I seem to have been in a bit of a blogging-minislump lately. Coinciding with a stitching-minislump, unfortunately. So what have I been doing? Well, sleeping, shopping, studying, and stuffing my face, mainly 😆

New Year’s Eve, aka Finn’s Birthday, was quite something. The hottest NYE since… well, ever! In Melbourne the temperature eventually climbed to 42.9C (that would be 109.2F for some of you). In the part of the state where we were – somewhere north-west of Bendigo, it was somewhere close to 46C (that would be oh, about a million in Fahrenheit terms, I think). I say “somewhere close”, because opinions were varied between those who had thermometers attached to their cars, and we had no other measuring device. Suffice to say, it was Not Good. Much like an oven, really. We managed to summon enough energy to sing Happy Birthday for Finn (He’s THREE… OMG!) during the afternoon at some point, but mostly we just sat around in my Father-in-law’s half-renovated, non-airconditioned house and melted into people-puddles. The point where the power failed and our one little pedestal fan was no longer, that was really, really Not Fun.

At close to sunset (temperature still v.high 30s, at least), we drove up to nearby Melville Caves, where we ate prawns, drank champagne (though neither for me 😥 ), and watched the sun set. Well, kind of. Visibility was a bit poor due to the bushfires raging across the state in Stawell.

We had plans to stay the night with my FIL and drive to Mum’s (about an hour-and-a-half away) in the morning for another mini-party for Finn. But at around 11pm, with one grumpy boy on our hands, temps still in the mid-to-high-30s, little hope of restful sleep, and no shower to be had in the morning, we decided to pack up and drive across the state right there and then. So that is how I came to see in 2006 as the only person awake in the car in the middle of nowhere. (After saying the obligatory “White Rabbits”, I woke OtherHalf to wish him Happy New Year :giggle: )

The change in the weather didn’t come through until mid-afternoon on the 1st, but how blissful when it did. I celebrated by burning the wagon! Yes… that’s right. I SHOPPED FOR STASH! I’m glad I managed to last out the year, but heck, I’m not doing that again :giggle: I headed over to Stitching Bits and Bobs and reduced the size of my wishlist by 8 charts, some beads and sparklies to kit out Mermaids of the Deep Blue, and a few other bits and pieces (or bits and bobs, I guess!) My package should be here any day now, I’ll be sure to take a picture for you!

Christmas and NYE (and shopping) having taken the wind completely out of my sails, I pretty much slept through January 2nd and 3rd… and then I went back to uni on the 4th. Eeeek! I have been immersing myself in the exciting 😐 world of web servers ever since, and that’s what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks, oh joy. After that…… FREEDOM! Free, free, free as a bird! No more studying for me, for at least… err, well, let’s not make any promises we can’t keep now, shall we?!

Anyhoo… here’s a couple of NYE pictures for you. These were taken up at the caves. 1) Happy Birthday Finny Banana! 2) Happy New Year to 3 generations of boys 🙂

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O Tannenbaum

Christmas-Tree

Christmas for me is always so much more about the anticipation. After 3 days of family craziness, by the 27th of December, I always have something of a ‘Christmas hangover’, and not in the normal way. Yesterday, we took down our tree – we don’t waste any time around here! Finn was quite dismayed that ‘Christmas is over’, but easily placated by a ‘sleeps-until-my-birthday’ countdown (2 more sleeps).

Anyway, for posterity’s sake, I give you… our tree, circa 2005 :giggle:

FinnWhiteBoard

Also, because I think it’s cute, and because it needed preservation (darn the transitory nature of the whiteboard), here’s a self-portrait Finn drew with his new markers from Santa:

An Awww Moment

You know, I think Christmas is cancelled. Because quite frankly, how could anything top today? Finn and I were exploring a new (to me) fabric shop with equal amounts of glee – he running madly beetween the bolts of fabric and probably irritating every other shopper, and I discovering wonderful embellished fabrics and trims in this little shop I had ignored for so long. When he came up to me, and announced…

“Mum, you’re gorgeous!”

So as you see, I need no more from my life, Christmas cannot possibly live up to that!

Eh. Pity he’ll grow up to be a teenager and will forever more think his Mum is a complete dag :giggle: