Abby and her cousins riding the blanket

The kids got a real treat with chocolate, Twisties, cake and bubbles And they each got a giant ball to take home. Thanks to the lovely Omas and Aunty Alice!

Magical bubbles

Ta-da!

Abby is already 18 months old – that’s a year and a half. She’s turning into a real little girl and mummy just loves dressing her up. She’s getting back into allowing us to tie her hair up, which I love because she looks so much prettier and people won’t think she’s a boy.

My pretty little girl

She loves to read and can say and identify a lot of things in her books. She’s beginning to string words together more often, like “Baby cry” when Cameron is crying.

Story time

Six weeks have flown by so quickly. Cameron can smile and coo, and can lift his head and shoulders up during tummy time.

Me and my big little man

Cameron at five weeks old was 59cm and 5.7kg. The paediatrician’s response was “Holy moly!”. He also asked if I had taken home the right baby because I’m so little, lol! At 6 weeks Cameron weighed in at 5.97kg. He really is a growing boy!

Cameron getting chubby

Cameron slept for 7 hours straight last night, the longest uninterrupted sleep so far. He’s been doing 5 hour stretches in the last week, so I’m hoping this is progress and he’ll soon be sleeping through (as in at least 8 hours) by 8 weeks which is what Abby did. Fingers crossed!

And because sleeping babies are so cute, I have to share the below video with you. So cute!

Abby with her baby brother

Her vocab is forever extending. I’m losing track of all the words she knows because she picks up new ones so easily. She can recognise a lot of the things in her picture book and can understand many everyday things like “nappy change”, “bath time”, “bed time”, “pull your pants up” – lol.

She’s slowly learning the alphabet and numbers. She can recognise and say “A” (and sometimes will say “B” afterwards) and can say “2″ when you say “1″ but that’s about it. Still pretty good for a 17-month old.

Snuggly robe

Abby is growing up so fast. She’s becoming a real little girl. She loves to pretend to put on moisturiser, nail polish and lipstick, but still won’t keep her hair in pigtails or wear any hair accessories. It’s a shame because she looks so pretty with her hair done – oh well, we’ll have to settle for the 60s mop look instead – much more practical for a busy little monkey!

My little girl

For five days you stayed in hospital with mummy. Mummy went into labour four days overdue, and the assessment confirmed you were a big baby – probably too big for mummy to do it on her own, so we went ahead with a caesarian.

Happy family

You were born on Thursday 21 April 2011 at 1:55am, weighing 3.87kg (8lb 5oz). You had a high bilirubin count so had to be under phototherapy at the neonatal unit so you wouldn’t get jaundice.

Sunbathing

It was hard seeing you on your own under those harsh blue lights, and having blood tests taken several times a day. Thank goodness for the lovely staff who took good care of you.

Cameron at two days old

I was so happy when the levels became normal and I was able to spend the last two nights with you close by – even though you kept me up for hours wanting to feed. Little boys can be such piggies!

Cameron looking like Abby when she was younger

You look so much like your big sister Abby when she was your age. She loves you lots, even though she can’t express it properly (that’s why she does things like trying to feed you luncheon). I can’t wait for you two to become best of friends.

I think these two are related

All the pain and discomfort of pregnancy, labour and surgery has been worth it – even the vomiting from the drugs as I was feeding you after your birth! I love you Cameron.

The new man in my life

I have a terrible cold at the moment so it’s been even harder to accept that soon I will be awake every three hours to feed a screaming baby as well as look after an active toddler (as well as running a household and keeping myself sanitary!).

As for the pregnancy, I’m over it! I want this baby out as soon as possible, but hopefully after this cold’s subsided. My joints ache, my stretch marks have stretch marks, I can’t breathe properly even more so because of congestion, I have indigestion, and am literally sick and tired!

In saying all that, I’m so excited to meet the boy (we have yet to decide on a name) and love him as we love Abby. I know it’s going to be very hard for a little while, but we will have two little darlings who will grow up as best friends and practically look after themselves. Hooray for optimism! (And the labour will be quick and easy no doubt, lol.)

38 weeks and two to go

Just chilling and watching some tv

The other day she managed to get her head stuck through the deck rails – in fact she was more off than on the deck and that scared the bejesus out of me. I couldn’t get her unstuck and back onto the deck, so ran around the other side and pulled her out from the high end. I’ve been saying we need to trellis our deck because I know her head still fits through the gaps. Might have to be a little project in the next couple of weeks.

Loving the slide

I try and take her to the park every few days. It’s nice for her to explore and use up some energy without being told off all the time! We really do need to make our house more child-proof, especially as she’s an expert climber now, and getting tall enough to reach things she couldn’t before.

Elbows on the table? How about legs?

Abby’s getting so good at feeding herself. She can manage almost her whole bowl of food or pottle of yoghurt by herself without making much mess. Quite often she doesn’t want us feeding her because she wants to do it herself. That’s fine by me!

Her favourite way to drink her milk or have a snack is sitting on her Abby Cadabby chair at the coffee table. God forbid if anyone else is sitting in her chair when she wants it! You will be pushed away.

She’s also a pro at riding her rocking horse now – complete with hat and a “Yeeha” at the end.

Unfortunately any time is play time and Abby still won’t stay in one place to get her nappy changed. Today she took off while I was trying to clean up a sticky poo, and then sat her dirty butt down on the rug. I picked her up to reveal a nice brown butt-shaped patch with some chunks, which Fez promptly ate – EWWWWW!

What? I wanted an apricot, from up here.

She’s into climbing at the moment. Her latest feat has been climbing on to a chair, then on to the kitchen table, and then on to the set of storage drawers that I had left on the table!! OMG.

Whatcha doing...?

Abby’s also learnt to open drawers and cupboards so anything without a safety lock on it and within reach is fair game. She’s taken dishes out of the cupboards, tried to eat flour, stolen my keys from my handbag and proceeded to use them on the front door… The rubbish bin is also a point of interest, and she’s almost thrown my necklace away while I wasn’t looking. She pretty much wants to see, touch, taste and test everything. Quite often she’ll walk around pointing and going “OoOOohHH. OoOOOOhH!” to say “What’s that? Can I see it? Have it? Eat it? Please?”.

She’s been giving us a lot of trouble in regards to sleep lately. It’s almost every night that she will wake up (at varying times) and not go back to sleep. We have to go through the routine of changing her nappy, giving her some milk, and rubbing Bonjela on her gums because we don’t know the exact reason why she’s waking. It may be because she’s teething (she has two new teeth and at least another two coming through), or her appetite’s increased, or she’s hot and having nightmares. I really hope this doesn’t continue for too long because it’s starting to feel like a permanent hangover from the lack of a good night’s sleep.

Apart from that, she’s still my curious, cheeky, chuckling girl.

The movie was set in a hotel restaurant, and involved a man being told he’d have to launch an attack on India (or something to do with India) – he chose to shoot himself…

Waiters bustled around confused about the situation. I found myself part of the restaurant crowd and it was ‘real’. Investigators came and started asking questions. I said “I saw how it happened, but havent’ seen the body for myself”.  The body was now in another room and I didn’t want to see it.

All of  sudden I was back at home with my husband and Abby. Abby was fast asleep. The hubby said that the same men who asked for the attack on India were after him. Before anything else, Abby had woken up and walked into the kitchen to where we were talking. We thought “WTF? Did she crawl up and through the ceiling?” – that was a totally reasonable explanation in that dream! We found that apparently she managed to get out of a gap in her bunk bed barriers and out of her room. (By the way, Abby still sleeps in her cot in real life.)

Then the phone rung. It was Vodafone saying they’d help protect us. They started the call with “Sorry we’ve been so slack…” (lol!) and offered us a safe house. I told the husband I didn’t want to stay in the house any longer and we needed to go now. Then we heard car noises out front and someone knocked at the door….

That’s when I woke up to the sound of Abby crying – it was 1am at this stage. *Yawn*.

Did I mention my husband works for Telecom? What’s the dream trying to say? Get rid of Indian call centres, and go work for Vodafone? Sheesh, I dunno.

She should learn that dirt is not food

Whenever someone opens then closes the front door, she throws a wobbly. She loves going outside and acts like we’re the meanest people in the world when someone leaves and she can’t go too, or even if we’re just coming back inside! She acts the same way when we end her backyard explorations.

Anything in there I can eat?

She’s decided that the coffee table and her chair make a great jungle gym to practice climbing on. It’s harmless (except if she were to fall off onto the hard floor), but it’s not a habit we want to form – thus, another reason to scream and shout at her mean parents.

Just fiddling, mum

Another reason for her behaviour might be because she’s not feeling the best lately. Her temperature has been lingering around 37.5-38 so she’s a little warmer than usual. We’ve also noticed those omnious spots collectively labelled a “viral rash” by GPs that pretty much equate to a cold of some sort. On top of that she’s dribbling lots and it looks like she’s teething yet again.

It’s great that the husband still has a week of leave left. I really appreciate the extra pair of hands and eyes, especially now that I’m getting big and heavy, making most everyday things a bit of an effort. And dealing with a grumpy, tantrum-throwing baby at the moment is hard work!

This should be easy, right?

Abby’s starting to learn more words. When we tell her it’s “teeth time” she says “tee, tee”. She can also say “nahnah” to mean banana – she even pointed to them at the supermarket and said “nahnah” without any prompting. Super impressed mum. She still knows “shoe” or “ball” too.

Walking to find more trouble

She’s getting really confident with herself. Her walking is coming along nicely. She can crawl down the deck steps backwards. She rocks on her horse Neigh-neigh without help. She loves her paddling pool and climbs in and out to take “exploration” breaks on the deck. She pushes her wagon and gets on her car by herself. She drinks from straws, sipper bottles and cups, and the dog bowl when we’re not paying attention.

Abby is turning into a little girl, a Terrible-Two perhaps – argh! In saying that, I hope she grows up a bit faster before her brother comes along, maybe drop the tantrums for starters?

I promise to be a good girl - promise.

Hands up everyone! Abby and her cousins.

We spent our Christmas in Palmerston North this year visiting the husband’s family there. It was a busy day, leaving Wellington in the morning, arriving in Palmie two hours later for a Christmas lunch at the mother-in-law’s, then over to the father-in-law’s for dinner. I ate way too much food and suffered indigestion so didn’t get much sleep that night (I should’ve learnt from my last pregnancy) . And then Abby decided to wake up with the sunrise at 5am the next day. That’s what happens when you don’t have curtains!

Fez after too many festivities

We then spent several nights with the sister-in-law, and ate and ate some more. Fez had a great time playing with the other dogs, and his mum Floss.

Abby had fun meeting lots of different animals. She got to touch alpacas, horses, some new cats and dogs, and met a budgie. She even got to sit on a miniature horse but didn’t like that at all!

Meeting some miniature horses

Oh hai

During the week we were away, Abby decided that it was time to walk more on her own. It’s still a bit strange seeing my baby walking whenever she pleases. She still needs to pull herself up on something to get on her feet, but it won’t be long before she’s completely independent with her walking. And it won’t be long before there’s two of them to run after! Good lord, she’s already wearing me out and I’ve even had lots of sleep-ins lately. I better enjoy the two weeks the hubby has left off work before I won’t have the time to!