24 August 2011

Picnic with whales on the beach

It was a beautiful sunny mid-winter's day in Sydney yesterday - 20 degrees and blue skies.

Violet and I headed to the local beach, North Curl Curl for a walk and after finding a nice spot to sit down and watch the surfers had the added privilege of spotting a huge whale - feeding right behind the surf (and surfers). He popped up and down a few times and we got to see him quite close up. (The photo above is indicative of what we saw!)

Violet was so excited that we ended up having an unplanned picnic on the beach - our first au naturel feed - good thing it was a warm day!  
   

20 August 2011

Violet's first encounter with Aussie bureaucracy!


Third attempt of passport photos for Violet - here's the proposed photo we hope will be accepted by the bureaucrats!



Here are the strict rules from the Australian Government website:

Children and babies

  • show the baby or child awake, looking straight at the camera with mouth closed and no pacifier.
  • show both edges of the face clearly (no toys, blankets, chair backs or other people visible) and no hair across the eyes.

parent's
hand visible

dark
background

eyes closed
 

looking away
 

mouth open/
face covered

14 August 2011

Greedy goose Violet!

Violet is doing very well - she weighed in last week at 3.8kg (8.4lbs) - the nurse said that normal expected progress would be 3.5kg (7.7lbs) based on her previous weight.

We've been getting out and about more - parenting group, lunch, walks with Sapphy and trips to the shops - very exciting stuff!

Lots of gurgling, grunting and snorting including sounds vaguely like 'hello' emerging. I actually think most of the sounds are food related - please feed me, I'm trying to shuffle down, I've done a poo etc!

We are getting sleep luckily as grizzle time seems to be mostly between 4-8pm so feeling pretty good.

Looking forward to getting back to swimming in a couple of weeks. Next week we have immunisations and six week check-ups - mum and baby.

Baby thai chi


11 August 2011

Parenting group #1

Today Violet and I met our fellow mums and babies at the Harbord Early Childhood Center for the first of four parent group meetings.

All the babies were born around the same time and aged between 3-6 weeks old. All the mums looked frazzled and there was one token dad who seemed to look more frazzled than all of us by the end of the session...

We were asked to share both the 'worst' and 'most memorable' thing about the birth. (Essentially the same thing for most of us but I don't think that was the intention!)

The general consensus was that the worst part were the contractions leading up to the pushing stage (we were all happy to be able to push by then). The best memory was skin on skin time with the little one immediately after birth as well as witnessing our loved one's first encounter with baby.

I found myself almost feeling grateful about my 5 hour projectile vomiting, cripplingly painful, no drugs ordeal after hearing some of the other labour stories. For example one lady was carried out of her home to an ambulance by the builders working next door 'naked and covered in blood'. Yet another example of a home birth disaster!

Violet was also weighed by the nurse, kindly decorating their scales with wee and vomit. 

07 August 2011

Violet is connected

Violet is only a few weeks old but is already blogging, emailing and tweeting!

As family and friends are so far away use this address to send Violet messages to read at a later date!

Could be news from home, birthday messages etc:

violetcarding@gmail.com

Follow Violet on Twitter:

@violetcarding