Hmmmm no they don't!

Maybe life has gotten in the way a wee bit lately for writing blog posts, but we shall endeavour to fix that... I think that as more starts happening with the house the updates will be more forthcoming.  Two months and there should be plenty to write about :D

As for a life update from us, we've been to Adelaide for the national band championships over Easter.  Lots of Daddy and Kiddy park time whilst I was playing then a lovely family day at the Zoo on ANZAC day before heading home.

It's now less than 100 days until our EDD for baby #3, but in reality it will probably be at least a week more than that until he/she makes their big entrance... 41 weeks seems to be the normal baby cooking time around here!  Having 2 small children already there isn't all that much to do in preparation for the arrival... we need to tidy out a corner of our bedroom for baby's things and I'd like to do a bit more general decluttering around the house and cook ahead some meals that we can eat in the early days but otherwise, we're pretty good.

The children delight, surprise and frustrate us every day :)  It's amazing the buttons a 3.5 year old can push... lots that yo u didn't realise you had.  Her questioning and logic skills are amazing though, she asks some fantastic questions and draws some brilliant conclusions on her own.  We are doing our very best to encourage and nurture this natural inquisitiveness but bedtime isn't the right time to be asking brilliant questions!

I'm also plugging away at my business, have had a few sales in the last fortnight so am desperately hoping that things will pick up from here, that would be great as we've invested quite a bit of money and many hours so far into setting up.  Obviously there are still so many things that need to be done but all baby steps.

The last thing I've been doing is knitting... I've rediscovered knitting over the last few months and have actually COMPLETED over 20 items... yes ok, they were all for children but still, that's a record for me. It means I've been spending less time on the computer and more time creating which is good for me :)  Knitting is definitely a separate, picture heavy post though, so watch out for a knitting post from me in the coming days.

Anyhow.... *waves, we are still here!!! :D

Do not have fur, they need contact with other humans for warmth.

They can't walk or run away from predators. They don't camouflage too well either.

They can't find their own food.

They have high energy requirements but a small stomach, so need to feed frequently.

Are rather a lot like Australian marsupial babies, being born helpless and needing to be close to their parents well into toddlerhood. We could learn a lot from koalas and kangaroos.

Can it be? Is the small boy really SIX months old? Alas yes, it is true! Six months is a big milestone... time for solids! Say goodbye to tidy mealtimes (who am I kidding, we have a toddler) and ever-so-delightful exclusively breastfed baby poo and get ready for messy floors and messier nappies.

Of course it is inevitable, they do need to eat eventually, and he was showing all the signs... very interested in mealtimes, chewing at us, able to manipulate smaller objects into his mouth, nice strong boy able to sit up in the highchair, tongue thrust reflex well and truly gone, drooling up a storm ready to start digesting all that foody goodness and of course, trying to swipe food when it was left in close proximity. He even managed to steal a dried cranberry from his sister a few weeks back.. he sat there looking most impressed with himself as I prised it from his little fist.

So, being a lazy family we don't bother with purees... straight to grown up food. "WHAT???" I hear you ask... "but... won't he choke?" umm no, well at least it's not any more likely than a baby eating smooth mush, in fact there is reason to believe that a baby feeding him or herself is less likely to choke as they are controlling the rate at which food enters their mouth. It is a fantastic thing to watch... he will bite (well, gum - no teeth yet) off a piece of food, move it around in his mouth, chew then gag. Your heart is in your throat the first few times but you soon learn to watch for any signs that indicate that they may be getting into trouble. Soon enough a piece of food will emerge from the tardis. Seriously, I have no idea how some of these bits fit in there in the first place, but he has managed to work out that he has bitten off more than he can chew - literally - and out it comes. I love that we are teaching him to eat and participate in mealtimes without having to cook him special food, and without a gazillion ice cube trays taking up valuable freezer space.

So far he's had... avocado, sweet potato, pumpkin, potato, carrot, runner bean, snow pea, tomato, broccoli (the only thing he's consistently rejecting), steak, toast, a fruit bun he swiped from me one day, banana, mango, watermelon, peach, apple, pear and yoghurt. No reactions so far, but we're really not expecting any.. and oh.my.gosh... the boy can EAT!

Some pictures for your viewing pleasure...

Or shall we call her.... Gastro G :-S

We had a fabulous long weekend... our first bout of gastro supplied undoubtedly by childcare. The first to fall victim was our beautiful baby boy... obviously infected by the love and kisses bestowed upon him by his sister immediately as she walks in the door from daycare of an afternoon.

Friday evening he vomited in his cot 3 times without a cry or any sign to let us know something was amiss... such a placid little thing he is that even on the third time (which I was standing outside the door for and recognised as a spew), soaking wet and stinking, vomit through his hair he didn't cry. I thought nothing of it other than, oh he's been vomiting so got him cleaned up, took him back to bed with us and fed him again.... and wore the lot. This is where I start to worry. My not quite 5 month old baby is unable to keep down breastmilk... something is seriously wrong! I tried again over the night, just letting him suck for a minute and then taking him off to try and just get small amounts of fluid over him, keeping him upright after feeds. In the end I threw Chuq out, propped myself up with a heap of pillows and just tried to rest with him in arms. He got a couple of hours sleep I got less. 5.30am and I try another feed. Wore it again and made the decision to take him to the hospital. Left home at 7am, him having not kept down a feed for nearly 12 hours I was starting to get concerned about dehydration. I don't know who it was who told me that if you need to take a child to the ED take them first thing in the morning but bless you.
We were processed and triaged pretty promptly... the triage nurse took one look at him and exclaimed with a huge grin on her face 'well, aren't you ugly' and managed to coax a smile out of my very flat baby boy.

So we were seen pretty quickly and I gave him another feed whilst waiting for the doctor. I caught my first letdown in a towel, thought it might be too much for him and then fed him for about 10 minutes and he fell asleep. Of course he didn't throw up one drop whilst in the hospital so we were off again on our merry way by 9am.
I went to grab something to eat, but a birthday present and wandered the city for a couple of hours as the little mite had fallen asleep and there was no way I was waking him. Still no spew, and no indication this was a horribly contagious, fast hitting gastro.

Arrived back at my parents' house where I was supposed to have spent the morning shovelling concrete and he had spewed in the car, only a tiny bit though.
The day went on, one more power spew, some small spews and then the other end started. Oh.my.goodness. Baby Beehinds Petite AI2s are AMAZING! How does a nappy so small contain a poo of such magnitude? As the day wore on, he was much brighter, almost back to normal. Thank goodness that was over. Oh how naive.
Sunday morning we wake to find that nobody has been sick overnight. Chuq heads out very early to do the 10km 'Run the Bridge' fun run. Mum and Dad have very kindly Kept G overnight so H and I stayed in bed until he got home.

Early afternoon I packed both kids up into the pram and did my 6km circuit, a couple of minutes faster than last time too! Felt pretty light headed when I got home but nothing a glass or two of fizzy soft drink didn't fix. Had continued light headed episodes over the rest of the day, just put it down to the walk. Wrong.

Dinner time... I looked at it and headed back to the couch. No, Chuq's cooking is NOT actually that bad. I just couldn't bring myself to even consider eating.
And thus begins another VERY long night. I doubt I slept a wink.. if I wasn't gastro-ing it up or feeding a baby I was laying down with such a bad headache there was no chance of me sleeping. Then half way through the night I heard footsteps in the hallway and the other adult spewing up his guts. Uh-Oh.

Come 7.30am I phoned my parents to see if they could take miss G for the day as there was no way we could look after an active toddler given that neither of us could stand without a headspin. No, Mum had it too.

G watched more TV on Monday than the rest of her life combined I think (OK, slight exaggeration but she has never ever before had the TV on all day... she actually asked to turn it off at one point!). I spent most of the day in bed physically not able to get out, Chuq was mainly on the couch watching G. By 5pm after a nice long nap with H I felt well enough to put on a load of washing. Didn't go to bed until late but ended up feeding H ALL night anyway. I'm guessing that after H being sick then me catching it my supply had taken a bit of a beating.

So, Tuesday... Chuq has stayed home from work in case he is still contagious. G and I braved the supermarket for a few things for lunch, rang Mum to see how she is and she tells us that Dad has caught it too. Fabulous... the man who cannot handle spew is vomiting. At least we feel OK Tuesday.

Wednesday everyone is better finally, Chuq back at work.

G is still well. She is now to be known as Gastro G.

This may end up being a bit of a rant, for that I am terribly sorry.... but where better to get it out than here ;)
Firstly I would like to get something out there...

yes, really. I am one of those parents, you know the ones that breastfeed their toddlers, bed share with their children, wears her babies around in slings rather than the sterile old pram, would never leave their precious babies to cry, so it goes on.

Anyone who knew me in my previous (and currently on-hold) life as a medical scientist would probably never believe it, but I just don't give a toss about all the 'rules'. Western cultures seem to be preoccupied with 'training' your babies to be what you want them to be or to be 'good' babies... babies are babies. They aren't capable of being 'bad'.
I am not going to reference anything... anyone who wants to do their own research on anything I will talk about here is more than welcome, but this is about ME and MY opinions... I have researched a lot of this stuff in order to come to my own conclusions and I encourage others to do the same.

So, let me address each of my hippy traits as mentioned above.

First the breastfeeding... well what a hot topic that has been of late. Let me put it this way. Women are given the tools to make the perfect food for their children. If correctly supported there are very few physiological reasons for this system to 'fail'. Most shortened breastfeeding relationships are due to poor advice or little/no support from the wider community. For goodness' sakes, a quarter of Australians think that it is inappropriate to feed a baby in public. If that isn't going to put a whole lot of people off I don't know what is.

Let me make it VERY clear that I do not, nor would I ever put down any mother who has resorted to feeding her baby with breastmilk subsitutes. Every parent makes the best decision that they can with the tools they have available to them.

My problem is that the tools aren't being made available. For me, I don't ever remember seeing breastfeeding as a child. Maybe I can vaguely remember my sister being fed once or twice early on but that's pretty hazy. Really the first exposure I had to breastfeeding was when my niece was born in 2003. My brother and his family live interstate, however, so my exposure was limited.
When my first beautiful child was born in 2007 I assumed that breastfeeding would just work.... wrong! We were both learning! It took 5 whole weeks to get her actually gaining weight but we persevered and I went on to feed her for 14 months and 6 days... 10 long months short of my ultimate goal but still many months longer than I thought possible at the very start. The things that saved my breastfeeding relationship with G were 1. finding the ABA Forum and 2. A wonderful child health nurse who has since retired.
My story is not uncommon, especially for first time mothers who do not have a lot of breastfeeding support around them. So why is it OK for people all around them to say 'oh, just put him/her on the bottle' but if I were to give someone suggestions to help them breastfeed I am labelled all sorts of nasty things.

Note: Warning to non parents – this post contains descriptions of infants bodily functions!

Before G was born, Emma and I briefly considered using cloth nappies. “Not a chance!” we both said. Folding stupid towels, safety pins, staining, leaks, washing, bleach … as if we’d do that!

When she was a couple of months old, the fact that our wheelie bin was filling up in a week (we have fortnightly collection) thanks to all the disposable nappies was a bit of a nuisance, and was warranting frequent extra trips to the tip. Emma did some more research and found some modern cloth nappies (MCN’s) online. I still wasn’t convinced - “Not a chance!” I said..

Well, Emma bought a small number of this particular brand (about half a dozen) and they were fantastic! They looked just like a disposable nappy – fold them up and stick on the tabs with velcro. No soaking or bleaching needed - throw them in the washing machine and hang them up afterwards, that’s it!

We bought some more and soon enough G was in cloth nappies full time during the day - we still used disposables for overnight though, since they couldn’t absorb the overnight wetting. Emma did buy a few different brands, each of which had their benefits, but nothing perfect. When G moved onto solids it made things interesting, but we bought an attachment that connects to the back of the toilet called a “Little Squirt” – a pressure hose that made cleaning poo off the nappies quick and painless. We were doing about 3 extra loads of washing per week.

We were looking to find a cloth nappy that she could wear overnight and we came across Baby Beehinds – they had a range of MCNs, some of which were hemp or bamboo (which are more absorbent than microfibre, which the other brands used) and some all-in-ones which came in both velcro and press-stud versions.  Emma bought a few and finally we had G in cloth nappies full time! As a bonus, the all-in-one’s didn’t leak as the disposables (and other brands) had on occasion. 

With H we were well prepared and he has been in MCNs full-time since birth, although when he was born we had to get some newborn sized ones sent down express post.  So far he has never worn a disposable nappy in his lifetime!  It was quite a busy washing schedule when we had 2 children in full time MCN's and we were often doing a load of nappies every day - but that only lasted a month or two before G was toilet trained during the day (she wears one nappy a day now - at night time).  It was still preferable to the alternative - rubbish bags of nappies sitting around because they couldn't fit in our 140L wheelie bin (which was only collected once a fortnight)!

This is for all the dads out there who are point blank refusing to use cloth nappies – it’s not a bad thing! Your wallet is healthier – over 2.5 years you would generally spend about $3000 on disposables, as opposed to $750-$1000 on MCN’s – and you can reuse the MCN’s on the next baby! If you aren’t sure you can always get a small number to use part-time. You are also helping the environment – most of you know that I’m no hippy/greenie (or am I? That’s a whole other blog post in itself!) but considering 1.3 billion disposable nappies go to landfill each year in Australia … well I guess we are only reducing that by 2000 per child per year, but every little bit helps.

Emma was always promoting the benefits of MCN’s to her fellow mums and mums-to-be, she frequently mentioned that the mum would be interested but the dad would veto it – on the grounds of either capital outlay or time and effort spent washing them.  On the cost, just buy a small number (half dozen) to start with. On the cleaning.. well, this will come out unintentionally sexist no matter which way I say it, but … let her buy them on the condition that if you don't like them, you don't have to take on any of the additional washing.  I'm pretty sure that after using them for a while you will realise it is no big deal, and help out ... give them a go, you will surprise yourself – we did!

Impartiality disclaimer: Emma has been a Baby Beehinds reseller/demonstrator for the Hobart area since June last year. She had been promoting MCN’s for free for a while so it seemed like the role was meant for her!

Well I can safely say that she will never be deficient in vitamin C! G would fight you to the death for a plate of grapes... She would be ecstatic if fruit was the only food she was allowed to eat. She can name every fruit in the supermarket except for some of the odd exotics and the only fruit I can think of off the top of my head that she doesn't like are mangoes... however next year she will probably love them!
We currently have a bag of plums and apricots in the bottom of the fridge that came from Mum & Dad's fruit trees (lucky as apricots cost a fortune!) and she is now tall enough to help herself... not sure how good this really is but at least she is toilet trained during the day so she's not going to be getting a red bum from sitting in fruit poo (sorry to all you non-parents but as you know, we parents can't have a conversation without mentioning poo).
We are also growing strawberries in pots on our back deck and one of the highlights of her day is checking to see if any are ready yet so that she can eat them (after she has helped to water them).
So, sitting in the highchair this evening after scraping most of the vegetables off her pizza and eating the base I give her a handful of blueberries and an apricot, she asks for a plum as well and I oblige. She then goes on to tell me that the blueberries are her friends.... ok then. At least they don't cry when you bite them, take your toys or compete with you for the attention of others.

We have had a lovely family day today... took the kids out to lunch at the Taste of Tasmania, G had a run around at the park on the way home. She is just the most beautiful child, smothers her 4 month old brother with love and affection... and then out of the blue she will pinch or slap him. She is usually a pretty good eater but refuses meat. Then one day (like today) she will pick all the chicken off a piece of pizza... to EAT it! She doesn't like to sleep during the day, but this afternoon on the way home she asked if she could go to sleep. When met with 'no darling, it's too late... when we get home we will eat tea and then you can go to sleep' tears followed. Toddlers are contradictions and extreme ends of the spectrum. One moment they will be adoring little angels, the next moment you just want to step aside and imagine that this raging devil couldn't possibly be your offspring. I put it down to the fact that they are learning... everything. They are totally egocentric and don't understand that the world isn't in existence to cater to their every whim... immediately! I am certain that she isn't malicious in hurting her brother, but rather wants to know what he will do if she pinches him. I recently read a quote on a forum which went something along the lines of 'you're not managing an inconvenience, you're raising a human being'. I wish I knew where it came from, maybe someone could enlighten me but I remind myself of that several times a day when she's doing something for the seventeenth time that I've asked her not to.