Just some photos

Too tired and distracted to blog properly, so in dot point.
- My last baby turned 10 months old last week
- She is the cleverest baby that ever lived
- She is the cutest baby in the world
- I love that she looks so much like herself now
- She will start childcare on June 2nd ...Am I getting a job, or am I going to study?
- School's back and Ella loves it
- Charlotte is my bundle of fire and ice
- I love Autumn
- 10 days and Raff gets his license back
- Tickets are booked for our Queensland holiday. Taking booking for my clique peeps to meet up with me ;)
- This Saturday saw me finally break the 70kg mark, since Lucy was born. A total of 20kgs lost since June 29 2007
- My family is awesome. Love my in-laws, too.
- The Aust tax office is blergh
- I love my husband
- It's my baby brothers 30th birthday this month. That = me old


Two sleepy heads sunning on a rock

Charlotte with Feral Aunt Meg


Lucy and Raff's Nana (Great Nana)

Our three bookworms


Lucy touches the Mall's Balls for the first time

Scallywag, complete with texta drawn over her face!

Told ya. Cutest baby ever!

Lucy????

Nope - they are all Charlotte. Everyone we come across says how much Lucy looks like Charlotte, so tonight I trawled through all the photos of Charlotte at 9-10 months old and I reckon they are right!

Charlotte had a bout 6 teeth in these photos, Lucy only has one that is about 3 days old, so more a point than a tooth.
Lucy has more hair than Charlotte did, but it seems to be about the same colour.
Charlotte was a fair bit smaller, though I would have to check their blue books to be certain of differences.

Ambitions

Ella was telling us today that her and her cousins have decided what they want to do when they grow up.
Ella, Hannah and Bethany are going to be pilots. All three of them are going to learn to fly big planes and will sit up in the cockpit together every day. (could you imagine!?)
Ryan will be the door holder, apparently.

But, 'if learning to fly is, like, really hard, then we are all just going to work at Big W'

'I can read!! I can go to school next time'

says charlotte, after getting 14 out of 14 names right on the fridge below!


She is doing great, haltingly writing her name. She has the C, L, O and (one) T down pat. Who gave this child such an unwieldy name?

I think for the first time ever she sat down to colour in, and did a great job, if I do say so myself!


Two funnies from Charlotte - "the doctor took out my tonsils and he gave me SUPER powers instead"
and, after a joke telling spree by her big sister -
"Listen! I've got a joke! - How many frogs were on the plant?








Only one! Cos all the other ones died!!" *insert raucous three year old laughter*

A lovely day out

We had the Geek Meet today. A picnic at the helicopter playground in North Adelaide with assorted Geeks On Call staff and families. We are a growing bunch now and I got to meet some new faces, and there were more kids! Ella was really happy to see some kids close in age to her.
The kids played for about 5 hours straight, the adults ate for that long!

I didn't catch the big girls much - they kept running away - , but I have dozens of Lucy photos that I will put up in a tick.




Lucy is about 36 hours away from cutting her first tooth, I reckon. She is going against the norm and cutting out of sequence (cross cutting). Normally a child would cut bottom front two and then top front two, but she is cutting her top left second incisor instead. She is going to llok quite funny when it comes though - a bit like a half breed vampire or something.

She also has started vocalising A LOT. She now has very defined speech sounds for Charlotte, Ella, baby, daddy, cat and mama. Hard to explain, but they aren't really words. When she says the girls' names though, they turn around, they know she is talking to them so it is very close to words IMO.

Tonight at dinner, I said to Ella 'where has Charlotte gone?' and Ella said she was in the toilet. Well, when Charlotte came back from the toilet, Lucy was all "Charlotte Charlotte" excitedly (well, her version of, but you know what I mean!)

Adenotonsillectomy

I typed this out the night after Charlotte had her tonsils and adenoids out and never got around to finishing the story!

*sigh*
Well, this is going to be long. I need to debrief!
Charlotte is a feisty kid, really unpredictable. I never quite know what her behaviour is going to be like. I have walked out of the dentist and various doctors appointments with her kicking and screaming, absolutely refusing to be looked at, so I was anxious about the whole thing. The operation itself, the recovery, everything.
So just her and I rock up to the hospital. Mum was at home with Lucy, and Raff was getting some work done first up. She was happy as, walking along with her roller bag Bob the Builder case. Waited at the admission desk happily with me, sat and watched TV with me, and then the man came out and called her name and she freaked dropped to the ground and crawled under the chair in the packed waiting room. Yay.

I had to half drag, half carry her in to the lift and in to her room and then back out in to the lounge area as she was upsetting the recuperating kids. The nurse came in to chat about stuff, take her temp, weigh her etc etc. It was horrible. She screamed and kicked and freaked out. I was in tears and I just wanted to go home :( The nurse left us alone and I put a video on and she sat on my lap and clung to me, with one hand clamped fast over her mouth, and her little shoulder squished up against her ear (to keep out marauding ear thermometers!)

So we sat and waited and the a lovely lady came in to tell us about the hospital routines etc and she just happened to have a grand daughter named Charlotte, and she had her tonsils out and got to eat jelly and honey sandwiches afterwards and she wears pink shoes just like my Charlotte. I could have kissed her! She was divine, and of course Charlotte relaxed and happily trotted off to the play room with her, and I layed on the couch and read my novel while Charlotte played for ages.

Now - we got there at 11am, Charlotte had been fasting since 7am. So there were intermittent claims of hunger - I was flipperin' starving, but I couldn't eat in front of her and I couldn't leave her ...
At 12:30 she got shown to her bed. Very exciting! So I ask if we have long to wait and the nurse says that the surgery list doesn't start until 2 :-o
I texted mum to let her know - she had waited for Lucy to wake from her nap and then caught a train in to the city - she was on her way to the hospital and proved to be a timely diversion. I snuck off to the TV room under the guise of needing somewhere silent to feed the ever distractable Lucy, but really I went in there and scoffed my face with banana and dried apricots and almonds!

Charlotte went from insisting to me that she was not going to wear her gown or see the doctor, to getting in her gown happily and letting the anaesthetist listen to her heart etc. in the space of about 10 minutes. And then it was on. My anxiety level was pretty amped by then. Mum took Charlotte to the play room while I breastfed Lucy again.

The doctor came in and got her up on the bed, into her gown, the beds brakes came off and my baby girl was eyes wide as she was cranked up high and wheeled down the hallway. That was a long walk. I was so nervous and cruelly it reminded me of being wheeled in to theatre to deliver Lucy, so I was pretty freaked.

The hospital was fantastic, the lift we went in had painting all over the walls and ceiling for the kids to look at. It was so lovely. The staff were amazing.

We got wheeled in to this cubicle bit where they gave her some colouring in to do (She asked for an extra one for Ella :)) and they gave her a balloon. My darling girl says 'Excuse me, can I pease have a blue balloon cos blue is my favourite colour' It was about then that I just wanted to scoop her out of there and run and live in a cave with her... The nurse brought her back her balloon and all was good.

They took a photo of us together - a Polaroid, so she could sit and watch it develop. It was lovely, really nice. The ENT surgeon came and had a chat to us and then we were wheeled in to theatre. Charlotte was soooo trusting. Her eyes were huge, watching everything and everyone and just listening to what they said. She snuggled right down under the blanket with her stuffed toy elephant.

Then the anaesthetist said that she would be best cradled in my lap to put her to sleep. Nice, I thought. And then he whispered 'hold her very firmly, mum' :( He put the mask over her face and told her to blow in to it like she was blowing in to a balloon, and she took two big breaths and blew. And then she freaked :( and panicked and kicked and tried to pull away and all I could do was whisper to her and kiss her and love her. Then she was out. Eyes rolled back and a gaspy sound in her chest. I was led out of there quick smart and I sobbed all the way down in the elevator.

Thank goodness my mum was there and knew how I felt. We ducked downstairs for a coffee and a half a sandwich. Raff arrived then, and mum took Lucy for a walk to try and get her to sleep.

The doctor had said she would be gone about an hour all up - 30 minutes or the operation and 30 minutes in recovery, so once she had been gone for 45 minutes, I needed to be up in her room waiting. In the end we aited one hour and 20 minutes and those twenty minutes were pretty gruelling. The little boy that was in the next bed came back, we could hear him screaming all the way from the lift, so I imagined that we would hear Charlotte coming too. Not so. She was wheeled silently into the room, as she had came out of the anaesthetic pretty dramatically and they had to give her some Pethadine to calm her down. She was totally zonked and besides sitting up a few times, looking extremely stoned, trying to vomit, we really didn't get much out of her for the next couple of hours.

At 5pm-ish, after my dad came to pick up mum, I decided that keeping an overtired 9 month old at the hospital was a really silly idea, so I left my sweetest middling in the hands of her dad, and drove home.

I felt horrible leaving her like that, so was extremely pleased when the phone rang about 8pm and Charlotte's squeaky little voice told me happily about the present that she unwrapped from her nana. I slept a lot easier knowing she was going to be okay. In the morning I spoke to her and Raff again and all seemed well. She wouldn't take Panadol, so had it put in her IV at one stage and had suppossitries at another time. The pain relief is crucial, as the most important thing that you can do after having tonsils removed is to return to a regular diet ASAP. The action of eating helps prevent infection.

When Ella, Lucy and I got to the hospital, we expected to see the happy smiling Charlotte that we had talked to on the phone a few hours earlier, but she was coming up to 4 hours since the last Panadol dose and they had just taken the needle out of her arm and was looking pretty damn cranky! I told thae nurse that I wanted her to have some Panadol for the drive home and so she held her down and squirted in down her throat. Big mistake, as she then vomited up her breakfast all over herself and then refused to get out of her pukey Dora PJs.

Anyway, we made it home and her recovery was astounding. Besides the first day home from hospital, she hasn't had a day sleep at all. Also, since the following morning when I managed to get her to eat her rice bubbles mixed with ground up Panadol, she has had no relief. She was straight back to eating foods as normal, and has faced the days really well.

The nights were a bit tougher with her waking and yelling and crying, but still it has been 11 days since she had the surgery and she has only woken 4 or 5 nights.
Considering that the reason she had the surgery done was because of lots of night wakings/irregular sleep/breathing/snoring (obstructive sleep apnea), we are pretty happy with that.

I have always checked on the girls as we go up to bed at night, to arrange their blankets and what not, and have been marvelling at the silent sleep coming from Charlotte's bed now. She has always snored and snorted in her sleep, and now no longer. I can already see a massive change in her behaviour. She is not so cranky and is a lot calmer.


She was very impressed with the table. The staff were wonderful and let her take her stuffed toy in to theatre with her.

Obligatory gappy gown.

Photo of a photo, so not the best quality.

:(

Recuperating at home

One week later, at Hannah's 5th birthday party.

Big kids

Ella is a tree!

Lucy milestones

Lucy has achieved a whole heap of firsts since I blogged last. She will be 9 months old next weekend and is so clever :)
Just tonight she clapped for the first time, and I happened to have the camera sitting next to me, so here we are!

She is also now pulling to standing on anything and everything, crawling properly ie on all fours all the time.


She has learnt to blow raspberries which provides hours of entertainment. She got to watch her first TV show and it really took her fancy.
The Wiggles - everyones favourites, no?


She can stand up in her cot, so we get this cute view each time we enter her room after a sleep.

And her first swing on the swing at the park near mums. I have a photo of each of the girls that looks very similar to this!


But possibly my most favourite 'first' of all time is the first time she 'spoke' to me. I love the idea of Baby Signing. We generally work on the important ones, which are more, milk and drink. Later on we add things here and there, but the other girls were verbal pretty early, so the need for signing passes pretty quickly.
So, pretty much since Lucy started solid food, just before and as we hand her food we say 'More? More? You want some more?' tapping our flat palm against our chest. All four of us do it to her each meal time, so it was fantastic this week to see her, eyeing off the food, just out of reach and signing 'more'. Lucky again, as I had the camera right there to capture it.

Pretty clever, huh? Since then she has used it in context many times, even signing 'more' to my dad when he was holding her this morning and he knew to let me know she neede something to snack on. Delightful! and I really recommend it to anyone out there with pre verbal babies. Let me know how it goes!

Earth Hour

First things first. Go sign up for Earth Hour - right now. It is next weekend, so hurry!
EARTH HOUR

An environmental OMG

I don't have the time to do a proper entry on this, but you have to click on this link and read in. You just have to.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php

And I know that my blog is now being read by an assortment of people, so ....
go on - comment! Tell me what you are going to do to help reduce some of these horrific footprints.
Me? No more takeaway coffees or plastic cups or plates. Ever.

Lucy

I had planned on doing a post all about Charlotte today, but Lucy stole the show, I am afraid!



She got very stuck, as she had her hand on some of the kids toys outside and refused to let them go. I ended up having to rush out the front door and run around the back and drag her through. It was very funny!

Also this one is a classic Lucy face.


She is a cheery little vegemite. She doesn't really cry that much. I mean, she is hurting herself all the time at the moment - banging her head, falling over things, flipping backwards, just your general run-of-the-mill learning to move type incidents, which always bring a wail of shock. She has caught the cat a few times which hasn't ended well, but overall she is just a happy kid. Loves to watch her sisters do their thing.
She has started venturing further away from us now and we really can't rely on her being on the general vicinity of where we left her nowadays. She is still commando crawling, but today she took 3 knee-steps (?) and she spends a huge amount of time on her hands and knees trying to get it all together.

I had a day yesterday with just Lucy from 9 am until 5pm. It was really lovely and hit me how much I like her. I mean, from the second I saw her (even before) I have been head over heels in love with her, which is no great surprise. But I really like her and like being with her, and we have so much fun! She is wild and cheeky and her personality is just shining. Such a fun age.

It's weird. Babies are just such time guzzlers, between breast feeds (6+ a day at this age), solids prep and cleaning up the highchair and floor (3 times a day), settling (patting, rocking, singing) to sleep for two naps a day plus bedtime, 6+ nappy changes each day etc etc, but I like it all. I really like breastfeeding her, I love watching her try new foods (tonight was squash - she loved it!) I love watching her drift off to sleep. I even like nappy changes! Well, with nappies like these or these or even nappy covers like these why wouldn't you?

Things I like about Lucy
She closes her eyes as I come to blow a raspberry on her belly - she knows my hair is going to get in her eyes.

She giggles till she snorts.

She sees my hand coming in for a tickle and she is in hysterics at the anticipation of it all. I don't even have to touch her.

She gives me a quick glance before she offers a smile to anyone new (or even mum and dad) just to check that I approve of this person.

Her whole body pumps with excitement when she sees the cat. The cat flirts with her too, just out of reach.

She has a funny little laugh when she sees us trying to teach her something new - like waving, or clapping or signing 'more'

The goosey look she gets on her face when both Raff and I are standing next to each other in front of her, her eyes flicking from one of us to the other and back again. She knows she is ours.

When she sleeps in our bed, in the morning when she wakes, she goes from a deep sleep to instantly awake and rolls straight over to Raff and starts patting him on the back 'hello'

The extra speed she gets in her legs when she sees that we have accidently left the big girls door opened, closely followed by the mini-tantrum thrown when I can still beat her to the door and shut it - too many little things to choke on in that room!

My most favourite thing this week is the cuddles she gives my mum :)

We take so much for granted

I was all set to do a post each on all of my girls today, but got distracted online (as you do ...) and came across this site. http://www.goods4girls.org/

It is not something that gets talked about, near thought about anywhere often enough. So many women all over the world every month throwing away piles of plasticky non degradable items. Can you imagine the piles and piles of pads etc out there? Gross, huh?

We are so very lucky in so many ways here in Australia, that this or this just don't need to be thought about.

It seems like an odd thing to do in this day and age. Almost archaic, and dare I say it? Gross. But reuseable sanitary items are the way we need to go.
Do you know how to sew? Give it a go

Or wouldn't know a sewing machine if it hit you in the head? Try these

Make some, buy some, send them here and grab a handful for yourself.
You won't go back, I promise.

Ella

As always, it has been too long between posts. At the end of each day it is surprisingly easy to tell myself that I will have more time tomorrow to blog. Funnily enough that extra time is yet to eventuate.

Today marks the first day of week 4 of Term one. The kids have all settled in to their daily routine. Each day has a fairly consistent outline to it, so we all find staying in the groove of it fairly easy. The one bonus that we have this year is that Ella wants to go to school, in fact she finds school 'fantastic'. So our mornings are very smooth running, as we are no longer fighting to get her in her uniform and out the door.

Her new teacher is lovely. Efficient and kind and available and nice. Ella is having a lot of trouble with the pronunciation of her teachers name, which I never would have imagined. Mrs Hudson - not so hard, right? Well, she was Mrs Hunstman for a while, then Mrs Hutson, which is close, but now it is Mrs Huntston. Oh well.

Ella has grown riduculously tall lately, sprouting a good couple of inches in the few months since she turned 5. She is a long lithe thing. She wants to be a singer, or a musician of some sort. Un-biased opinion of course, but she has a beautiful singing voice and can certainly hold a tune. She has signed up for piano lessons through the school this term and we all look forward to that being fun. She also harbours a secret desire to become a vet, but as a child that has never really voluntarily touched an animal of any sort,I think that may just be a pipe dream.

She is clever and reading up a storm now. She wanted me to take her reading a book the other day, so I have 5 minutes of footage that I will attempt to upload shortly.
She is thoughful and resposible and looks out for her sisters. She is really in tune with Lucy and could probably look after her perfectly well in my absence.

It is only in hindsight that I really 'get' how hard the last 7ish months have been for her, with starting school (with a less than nice teacher) on top of having an extra sibling added to the family. Her favourite book of all time is "I wish my mother was an octopus' and she likes to quote it to me often.

She thrives on one one one time, so her and I spent a lovely morning on Saturday with just the two of us. We went to the library and then hung out at a coffee shop, reading books on the couch. It was refreshing for both of us. Sometimes in the day to day of getting stuff cleaned and assorted people fed and clothed and washed, I forget to make time just for her. I mean, we read together, but usually while I am cooking dinner, or breastfeeding Lucy, or we start off alone, but end up with me jumping up to save the baby from choking on another small piece of plasticky something or other, or wiping a bottom, or getting some food for the starving masses or whatever.

Hmm, I just went to add in some recent phtos of her, but there are none of her since the beginning of the year, besides the 'back to school' ones that I already posted.
Must remedy that, hey?

I think she is amazing and it is just mind blowing that she will be six this year!

Here is that youtube of her reading. Like I said, it does go for just over 5 minutes, but I did promise her I would blog it for you all ;)

Photo as promised

of our Lucy sitting up. She finds it so hilarious, as do her sisters. The world must look so different up right.



For Christmas Ella received a very cool Lego set.


Since Christmas she has been asking fairly regularly for us to build the Lego house, but it has always been at inopportune times, like at dinner time, or bed time, or while we are in the car to somewhere, or rushing out the door to an appointment, so my usual answer was 'Yep, sure, but not right now. We have the whole holidays to build it'
So of course, I realise on Thursday that the holidays are all but over, so when she asked me as I was walking around with a ridiculously overtired baby and two starving hungry children, contemplating what to cook for dinner at 5pm, I said yes. I strapped Lucy in to the Ergo (Have I mentioned the Ergo Lately? It's my favourite baby thing ever) I found some date scones in the freezer and declared them entree, cut up some apple and banana and started unpackaging the Lego.
It flashed me back to our childhood, constructing castles and spacecraft. I was trying to clue Ella in on the lingo '2by6thinwhite?'

It ended up being a few days effort as everyones patience wore thin after an hour or so at it, and I ended up finishing the last half of the roof all by myself (and loved it ;))







And it can be made in to two other models. I can only find one online. I look forward to demolishing the one we have done and attempting this next one. Maybe when Ella is back at school ;)


Oops, I came back in to plug the site that we bought the Lego from I had been unable to find any decent sets in the shops, but this site had the set for only $55 before Christmas.

Ella funnies

Today the girls were playing outside in the cubby house and Ella came inside to ask me if I knew when Nana was getting the air conditioning put in to the cubby.

She just came up to me and asked me how come some food comes up as vomit and some food turns in to poo. So we chatted about that for a while, all of a sudden there was a 'click' in her eyes and she said 'Ahh! So that's why you put your hands there when you do a bow! 'cos it's called your bowel. I get it.'

From Ella - Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?










To get to the bottom!


Knock, knock
Who's there?
Waiter
Waiter who?
Waiter minute while I tie my shoes


boom boom

and she's off!

How excitement! We have a crawler! Lucy has been moving around for ages, twisting on the spot, inching forward to grab things, but this week she has mastered it. She is still 'commando crawling', but practising up on her hands and knees too, so 'proper' crawling wont be that far away.


She also has learnt to sit unaided. Just like that. Yesterday she would fall backwards or sidewards instantly. Today she can sit and if she starts to tilt, then she puts a hand out to catch herself and can then right herself. I will have to take a photo of her doing it tomorrow.
For now here is a photo of all three of them.

How much longer have we got ...

... before she is on the move?











And yes, you heard right, that was a 'mum' in there !! :)
She started saying dadadada a week or so ago and now it is mumumumum.

I love this age. Life is just sooo good for a 6 month old baby. They love their own company, are happy to concentrate for ages on trying to pick up the contrasting lines on the carpet, are happy with some milk and a few shovels of food over the course of the day, learning constantly. She learnt to get up on her hands and knees today, as Ella was laying next to her saying 'copy me, Lucy, this is how you do it'

The excitement the older two get from her achievements are adorable. They could watch her eat and chew all day long, or drink from her sipper cup, or roll over, or eat her feet.

Perfect.

Half a year ...

The big signal that my baby is growing is that I now no longer provide every skerrick of nutrition. We introduced pumpkin to her this week and I think her anticipation of the food thing was far greater than the actual experience. She has been watching our every spoonful over the last few weeks, complete with mouth opening at the correct time, followed by chewing movements.
So she was absolutely ecstatic to be put in the high chair and then to have a bib around her neck with a bowl and a spoon in reach!!
And then the pumpkin approached the wide open mouth ...

and ...





Tonight we went out for dinner, to the Gawler Arms, and they had roast pumpkin, so she got her first go at finger foods to and enjoyed that greatly. Mushing it between her fingers and such. Only time will tell whether any was ingested or not ...

And she has also started verbalising consonants


She is on the move, too. Not much and not far, but edging around a bit like a little caterpillar!