Blessed to have a healthy baby

On Monday I took Anthea for her 6-month check-up.

She is on the 75th percentile for head circumference and length, and, weighing in at 9kg, is on the 97th percentile for weight. Yay for chubby bubbies! :)

The Doctor asked me what I was feeding her, and I said that she's breastfed, and that in the last week I'd been trying to introduce a little bit of stewed apple - but that Annie just doesn't seem to be interested. She told me not to worry about pushing the solids just yet "as she's clearly not starving!" :P

Here are a few photos I took this morning... I love babies in Bonds wondersuits - so given the cool rainy weather I took the opportunity to put her in one today... and then had to take pictures. :)

She loves sitting in the highchair, looking around:



And is getting better at sitting up...



...though not at smiling for the camera!



I think her favourite thing to do is to stand up... assisted of course!



Then she caught me taking the photo!

And who doesn't think babies in Jolly Jumpers are cute?!?!

Very very blessed are we...

You know, I think we may indeed be one of the most blessed families in the world.

We have a beautiful landlord named Jim. He is about to turn 82, and is one of the most amazing, kind, gentle, thoughtful, considerate, generous, clever, wonderful Christian men that we have ever met.

For starters: he is renting his granny flat to us at a minimal rate, (which enabled us to pay off the $25,000 debt Alastair brought into our marriage just days before our first anniversary). Minimal, as in, we'd be hard-pressed to find a motel for a night, for what he charges us for a week. He does all the lawns and gardening, saying "you've got enough to think about with your little girl" whenever we offer any sort of practical help. And those two things are only the beginning of his kindness to us. It would take me a year to write everything he does to make our lives easier... we are just constantly blown away by his servant-heart...

Anyhow, yesterday, would you believe it... he installed an air conditioning unit upstairs for us! Whenever it gets above about 25 degrees outside, it becomes stiflingly hot up there, and the only room that is up there, is our bedroom (where Annie sleeps too). A few weeks ago, Alastair went and talked to Jim, to ask if we might be able to put a little portable air conditioner up there or something, because Anthea was finding it hard to sleep... and lo-and-behold, this is what he came up with!

I keep thanking him, but he doesn't want to hear about it. :) I guess I just want to say that even though sometimes I complain about living in a tiny two-room granny flat, that we are so infinitely blessed... God's love is constantly being shown to us by this grandfather-figure at the other end of the hallway. May God bless you Jim, a thousand-fold!

PS to last post

Oh, I was going to add... the other thing that set me on edge on Saturday night was that a friend of my parents assumed I was pregnant and started talking about it with me, asking how I was going with the second pregnancy! :( I think that's really rude. Just sayin'.

The things we do...

Here I am, less than a week since I last blogged - go me! :)

The rest of last week was fairly straightforward... at home on Wednesday... shopping on Thursday... mothers' group and the completion of another workbook on Friday (only 3 to go now!).

Then along came Saturday. It was just a monster-big day. Lovely, but enormous.

It started Friday night really, Anthea woke every hour through the night. So that wasn't a great start to the weekend. Meaghan came and stayed the night on Friday so that she could come down to Murrumbateman/Yass with us on Saturday. We left at 8.30am, stopped at Sutton Forest at 9.30, and got to Aunty Heather's (Murrumbateman) at about 11.30. Had a lovely lunch and afternoon with them, even though Annie didn't sleep much. At about 5pm we went to a birthday party (combined 50th/25th for mother/daughter friends) in Yass. It was great to see so many of our friends in the one place; many of them hadn't yet met Anthea! But it was hideously hot, and she wouldn't feed and wouldn't settle, so unfortunately I found it rather stressful and overwhelming. We left at about 10pm and headed home, arriving just after midnight. Annie was good on the way home - slept most of the way. But once we were home she just wouldn't settle until after 2am.... and I had a bit of a meltdown. :(

If the beautiful family who threw said party read this, I want them to know that it was a lovely celebration, and it was absolutely nothing they did or didn't do that made it work out like this for me... thank you for inviting us! It was just me and where I'm at just now... hopefully I will learn to handle these situations better in the future and be better company! Or maybe big get-togethers just aren't our thing at the moment...

Yesterday, (Sunday) we just had a quite day, which was really good. Anthea was still a bit tired and grumpy, but last night she slept from 8.30pm til 4am when I put her dummy in, then slept til 7.15 when I fed her and put her straight back down and she woke just after 10am! Today she has slept a lot too, and she is much happier. :)

Some really nice things though: at the party we were able to sit with friends whom we hadn't seen for nearly a year... and both of us have welcomed new babies since that time! Also, I met two lovely women who have been following my blog for a while without me knowing. And, for one miniscule split second, I felt a tiny weeny bit famous - isn't it only famous people (like Danielle Carey) who have Amazing Unknowns read their stuff? :) Anyhow, it was so lovely to meet them, and to learn that they like reading about even the little things that I blab about here. :)

And now.... photos! These are the most recent, but certainly not the most flattering:

Ready for the party, but looking like a dag. (Thanks Aunty Meaghan! Did you take a nice one?)



Sporting the new running shoes... courtesy of Aunty Meaghan!



Annie just wants to stand up all the time - her legs are so strong!



Reading "Good Puppy" in the highchair



And this is today, helping me with my workbooks. :) She'd just woken up from a lovely, long, afternoon sleep, and Mum was down helping me so she took a photo. :)

And lastly to Amanda: yes, everything in my brain seems to be poo-related at the moment. Ahhh the joys... :P Yes, as I type we're waiting on the three-day poo again.... :)

A bit of an update

At the moment, here in Wollongong, it just doesn't seem to stop raining. Apparently, the average rainfall in February is 150mm, but we've already had over 170mm and we're only halfway through! So I've been struggling with getting the washing done (our laundry is outside - in the rain!), and, once it's done, I've been finding it hard to get it dry! Especially with the cloth nappies and everything.

I've also discovered that it is extremely difficult to do the groceries in the rain with a baby. So I've just not been going out. Which, I think, led to me almost going crazy last week - stuck in a tiny granny flat, wet (and smelly - after a day of sitting there and just not getting dry) washing on the clothes horse filling up the "lounge room".... I was just so over it.

But this week things are looking brighter. I guess everyone has their ups and downs... last week was really a bit of a down for me. Poor Alastair helped me over my little meltdown - he's getting quite good at that. :)

Okay. Whinge over.

Since my last post, I have actually completed nearly 6 of the last 10 workbooks for the Community Pharmacy course! So that is exciting. My mum has been coming down to help out with Anthea once or twice a week in order to give me a bit of time to concentrate on my work, which has been great. Yesterday she even cleaned my laundry from top to bottom while she was here - like seriously, she even washed the door!!! :)

At the end of last year, we left Keiraview Uniting Church. It was kind of sad to leave our friends behind, but I spose that the ones we keep up with outside of church are the "real" ones - and there are a few of those. :) Then we had a couple of weeks off, and have, for the last three or four Sundays, been attending the Wollongong Christian Reformed Church. And we have been really enjoying it - good solid teaching, friendly people... just what we need! :) We are now in the process of becoming members there.

What else...? Um... oh, Alastair is four weeks into an eight-week Liver Cleanse Diet. He's doing really well and has lost quite a few kilos now (I forget how many). Eating more salads and heavy brown bread has been good for me too - obviously while I'm breastfeeding I'm not dieting, but the healthier eating certainly isn't doing me any harm. I am just hungry all the time though, so need to cook myself something with a bit of meat or add some cheese... just to bulk the meal up a bit. :P

Anthea is still growing well, and she'll be 6 months in a couple of weeks - I think I'll start her on solids soon. She is such a funny little thing... chewing everything and dribbling constantly. I really hope she's not going to be one of those kids that has to wear a bib til they're 3 because of the dribbling thing though... :P Not quite sitting up on her own, but happy to sit in the highchair and watch everything that's going on. She's just started to laugh when we do blow-fishes on her tummy too, it's so cute. :) She also likes having drinks from my drink bottle, but I think she back-washes a lot, ew. :P Most of this year she has only been pooing once every three days, but every so often it seems there's a bit of a back-log of poo, and we get one a day for a few days in a row. It doesn't bother her, so I guess everything's fine!

She's just woken up, so I'll finish here. Photos next time! :)

General busy-ness!

What a busy month January always is! Always lots of out-of-town (and this time, out-of-country) visitors... umpteen dozen birthdays... the usual trying to get back into the swing of everyday life... dealing with horrendous humidity that saps you of your energy... and that sort of thing. It's all in a day's work of course, but to me, January always seems to fly by.

On Saturday morning, Aunty Meaghan got back from her 5-week trip to Europe, bearing lots of gifts for us all! She brought Anthea little clog slippers from Holland, a double-breasted duffel coat from London, a dress-up flamenco dress from Barcelona (for later on!), beanies from Prague, a necklace from Switzerland.... amongst other things!!! :) The Swiss chocolate was sooooo good... and she even brought back a beautiful woollen coat and Swarovski crystal earrings for me! How generous she is! I love her, and missed her terribly, so am looking forward to her visit tomorrow immensely! :)

Anthea is continuously a joy to us... not that we don't have our unsettled difficulties and such, but on the whole, she's really good. She rolls over now - all the time. No more lying on her back playing happily with her toys, if she's put on her back, that's the cue to start rolling. Problem is, she can only roll from her back to her front, not the other way... and she doesn't like lying on her tummy! So I put her down, and before I get two steps away, she's on her front, and she starts to grizzle...

The other day she was down for her afternoon nap... and when it was about time for her to wake up, we heard her cooing and laughing, so went up to say hello.... and found this:




















How cute does she look with her "monocle" on?!?! :)

Here she is on Daddy's shoulders... having the best time!




















And lately, she's enjoyed sitting in the highchair while I do dishes or whatever......




















So generally, my days are full and busy, and I love being a Mummy. :) I have 10 more units to go to finish my Certificate 3 in Community Pharmacy, so I'm really really really trying to get them done.... but it's not happening. :( And I'm not really sure how to put more hours into my day to do them, either! I'm flat out getting washing/dishes done and trying to do some dusting or vacuuming! And by the time Annie goes to bed at night, I'm ready for bed too! Any ideas???

Today I rang a friend with whom I hadn't spoken for a while, so it was lovely to catch up with her and hear what she's been up to..... and I was able to ask questions like "My hair is falling out in clumps, I think I'm going to go bald! Did that happen to you and does it ever stop?!?!" Then, what a surprise, she emailed me a bunch of photos of her kids so that I could see how they've grown. :) She reminded me that I hadn't blogged in a while, so I particularly hope she enjoys these pictures. :)

Random thoughts

And so Lachlan arrived on Wednesday 28th... and thus far, his visit has been different from what I expected. We went and stayed the weekend of 30th/31st/1st at Mum and Dad's so that he could spend lots of time with Annie, but I think I had unrealistic expectations for the weekend... I thought we'd do more sitting around talking and chilling together. But he's madly practicing most of the time... when he sits down, he's got his laptop with him... and when he talks, it's as though he's using a megaphone - all the time. And he slams doors when Anthea's asleep... and answers the phone really loudly... and I found it all a bit hard to deal with. Times have changed, and I guess we've all changed too...

Besides that, we had a trip to ED for Alastair after the steak he ate on New Year's Day attacked him... far out. You'd think he could just chew his food. :P No, it's okay, I still love him. :) That happened mid-arvo, and we went to emergency just after 8pm, got home just before 3am - wow, it's a whole 'nother world there at that time of night!!! That was very confronting.... the swearing druggo, the girl who's threatened an overdose so the cops have taken her 9 month old baby from her, so she's screaming and kicking the place down, swearing at the security guards (called in for our protection, I think)... far out. So I was very tired the next day. I'd gone home at about 9pm to feed and put Annie to bed (since we'd been told it'd be about a 2 hour wait before we could see a doctor), and Mum and Dad minded her for us, so that was very helpful, and at least she'd had a reasonable sleep.

I completely do not understand the poo thing with babies. We are still going at least 48-72 hours between poos at the moment, which is really weird. It's scary as you come up to the 48+ hour mark, and as every nappy change goes past without a poo, you wonder where she's putting it all and how massive it's going to be when it finally DOES come!!! As at this minute, we haven't had a poo since 11am Sunday......... eeeek..... it's scary going out with that hanging over you too - because often the poo that comes after 3 days warrants a bath to clean up - so if it happens while you're out... um... yeah.

Anthea just loves her showers with Daddy... I take her in to the bathroom all nudie, and she has a big grin on her face... then when she hears the water, she starts squealing and laughing, and the arms and legs start going - it's so cute!!! Meaghan's away, and when she heard that Annie had rolled over last week she was most upset, and said she'd better wait til she's home before she starts sitting up... hehe..... I'm sure she will, she's only just gone 4 months.

So I've just re-read all that, and it's a jumbled lot of random thoughts, isn't it! Oh well...

An update in pictures...

So much has been going on, and we've been so busy lately! It's late New Year's Eve, and we're at Mum and Dad's spending time with Lachlan while he's home (he's only back for 9 days!!). It's nice to see him, though sad that Meaghan is away in Europe so we're not all together as a big family. I'm missing her a lot - and from what I've heard, she's missing us too. She had a vomiting bug over Christmas too, poor girlie.

Anyhow, I don't really know how to sum up the last few weeks in words, so I'll do it in pictures instead. :)

Our Christmas tree - lights on:


Lights off:


And some of my favourite decorations:








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Our 3rd annual Gingerbread Day at Donna's - my house:

Our houses (nice look, Hamish!):


The fruits of our labour:


And on Gingerbread Day, Anthea got to have her first bath in a "big" bath (since we don't have a bath at our house) with her 8-year-old friend, Mairead - how happy does the bubby look?!?!

Christmas dress from Great-Uncle Jonathan:

Cute picture taken by Aunty Meaghan, the day before she left for Europe:

Mr. Fox - Annie's Christmas present from Uncle Lachlan:

First ever cuddles with Uncle Lachlan!


The chocolate piano I made for Lachlan:


Christmas Day with Pop (Alastair's Dad):

Daddy got a new computer game for Christmas... he was watching Anthea for me for a few minutes yesterday, and this is what I discovered when I came back:

And my parents earlier this evening... dressed up for a Dutch New Year's Eve/80th Birthday Party... how cute are they?!

Now, for some reason, those last two pics have decided to align left, and I can't fix it!!! Having tried several times, I'm just going to leave it - Happy New Year everyone!!! :)

Time goes so quickly...

My poor bubby has a cold, and has been so miserable and out of sorts for the last few days. :(

Hence my silence here... it will probably be after Christmas before I can update properly... but I hope you all have a lovely festive season! :)

Here's a picture of our dear girl a couple of weeks ago, before she got sick. She was in bed with us on a Saturday morning, laughing and carrying on! :)

And here's a recent family photo:

Just a quick one

I have much to blog about when I get a chance - we've been busy! The Christmas Tree is up, and we had our 3rd annual Gingerbread Day on Saturday which was enormously fun... lots of photos to share!

But for now, these will have to do. Dress - and photos - courtesy of my sister Meaghan! :)