Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

The year that was ... 2011


It's that time of the year again - I've posted so few blog updates this year that it would be entirely reasonable for even dedicated readers to not know what has happened in our lives in 2011!

The biggest change of course happened on 24 August - when our beautiful daughter Isla Abigail was born. What a change to the household... we are now outnumbered in our own house by our own children, and I am outnumbered by the females in the house! As much as we (or parents in general) like to complain about the challenges of parenthood, or their bad behaviour, or the lack of sleep... we are very lucky to have three happy, healthy, children who all make us smile every day.

I would like to say it has been a relatively easy transition - but honestly, I think most of the credit goes to Emma - having to look after three of them, by herself, three days a week - I don't know how she does it!

It seems to have been the year for babies - welcome to Eloise, Eleanor, Sofia, Lucie, Addison, Monte, Magnus, Charlotte, Max, Samuel, Oliver, Eli, Charlie, Sophie, Olivia, Quinn .. and I know I am going to forget at least one baby - but there have been so many!

The other big event this year was the start of construction of our new house in June. I won't go into detail as I have done that in other blog posts - but as of the end of the year, the frame for the upper floor is almost completed. We should be at lock up stage (cladding, windows and roof) by the end of January, all going well. The contracted end date is in May 2012. When I say end date - there will be some rooms incomplete as we wait on the sale of our current house. We can live with that - for those who remember when we moved into our current house - no flooring, no insulation, no fences, no decks, no concrete paths/driveway, no retaining walls - this won't be a problem for us to deal with!

Emma's business, Wrap 'Em, is going very well - she now has five major suppliers in Europe, and it seems a new shipment arrives at least once a week on average. The most recent one came about when they contacted Emma and asked if she would be the Australian reseller - which was a great vote of confidence!

Emma is also very busy education wise - as well as continuing her training for her Certificate IV in Breastfeeding Education via the Australian Breastfeeding Association - she is also enrolled in a Diploma of Music Performance at the University of Tasmania's Conservatorium of Music - fully funded thanks to an arrangement with the Hobart City Band!

Speaking of band - we travelled to Adelaide at Easter where Emma performed with HCB's wind symphony and brass band at the Australian National Band Championships. Among other things, we learned that there is a fully fenced modern playground just north of the city, which kept the kids busy, and Charles sane. We also managed to sneak in a quick trip to Adelaide Zoo (that was Georgia's fourth zoo in as many states!), as well as watching the ANZAC Day march on Easter Monday.

Apart from that, Emma and Hamish had a few days in Melbourne in June - a trip that was lengthened slightly by the Chilean ash cloud! Charles also had a weekend in Sydney in July to take part in Wikimedia Australia's strategic planning workshop. Charles was re-elected to the WM AU committee for another year in September.

Charles also joined the board of the Tasmania United Taskforce in November. For those who don't know, Charles has been an active campaigner for Tasmania having a team in the A-League, and this makes it official - looking after the website and social media channels of the Tassie bid!

Work wise, Charles is still in the Corporate IT department at Transend Networks - although changing focus for the first few months of 2012 to work as an Infrastructure Administrator, assisting with looking after the server and SAN infrastructure (translation for the non-geeks - the bigger, more expensive boxes with flashier lights). Certainly a welcome change of focus!

2012 will certainly be a year of big change for us - as well as moving, Georgia will be starting school (three days a week in kindergarten) - yes, already!

Once again, I will get in early for next year - have a Merry Christmas 2012 and a Happy New Year for 2013!

Nobody Loves a Neglected Blog!

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

Typhoid Mary

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

**disclaimer... you may wish to stop reading now**

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.

Popular Posts