Happy Five Months, Kiddo! (Anna & Caroline)

Caroline is back at home and recovering. It's been a crazy week. Thanks for everyone's emails and support.

In the meantime, in the middle of all this craziness, Emma casually turned five months old today!

She can now roll over, grab hold of things and babbles away in baby language (we babble back). She can pull herself up to a sitting position and is getting quite strong. She still likes to pull at our noses to see if they come off (they haven't so far but she seems convinced it's only a matter of time). When she needs comforting, she reaches out and pulls an arm towards her, inspects the hand, chooses a finger that looks particularly succulent, turns it over and places it in her mouth to suck on it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the human pacifier (I'd prefer to say "dummy, but that word isn't recognized here and it comes across as a little self-deprecating). She puts everything in her mouth (yeugh - not nice to think about) and chews on whatever she can get her hands on. She has had bouts of teething, giving us a clue what we're in for (do babies really need so many teeth? Couldn't they make do with just one or two? And why, after they've grown every organ in their body, is growing teeth so stressful??...) And she's growing out of clothes quicker than we can try them on her. She is, without any bias at all, the cutest, smartest, most wonderful baby in the entire universe :)

What with moving house, new jobs, visits from the grandparents and hospital stays, there are a lot of photos that haven't made it to here over the past few months. So here's a brief voyage through our family collection.

Granny Heath and Grandad (Anna'a parents, Heather and John) came to visit. We were at the barrier at the airport waiting for them and before we knew it, Emma had been swooped away and cuddled in her Grandad's arms. How did he manage that? It was the first of many cuddles, snuggles, play times and general adoration. Very sappy grandparents!

We held a small welcoming ceremony for Emma in early July, on Caroline's birthday. We dressed Emma in the gown Anna wore at her Christening - which was adapted from Heather's hand-sown wedding dress. We had a brief ceremony under "our" tree near English Bay - where we officially got engaged a few years ago - and poured water on her head from the Pacific Ocean, to symbolize all the people in her life who live in different countries.

While Heather and John were here, we moved house - from our small one bedroom apartment to our very own townhouse. We planned it so that John and Heather could "tuck us up" in our new place and it was great to have them here. This is our new house. It's a bit like Dr. Who's tardis - it's bigger inside than it looks from the outside.

We've been spending a lot of time outside as well, especially during the heatwave - going for walks, lounging on the grass and swimming. One day, Emma decided to explore the grass and ended up with dirt all over her sleeper. She was a very grubby, and very happy, baby. A sign of things to come. We were very proud of her.


And here are some other random photos from the last little while.

Emma. We love you kiddo.

Catharsis (Anna)

Emma and I spent last night at the hospital bunked down in Caroline's hospital room, so we were both pretty exhausted when we got home. After four days of absolutely angelic behaviour in very difficult cirumstances, Emma's response to being back at home? Complete meltdown - the end-of-the-world-is-nigh kind where NOTHING worked. Two hours of high-pitched screaming had us both in tears, while my beautiful daughter stared at me reproachfully for suddenly transforming into a rotten mother who didn't have a clue what she needed (my well-used toolkit of tactics and options apparently being completely misguided). So I cuddled her and told her I had no idea what was wrong but that I was there and would keep cuddling here while I tried to figure it out and repeated to myself that even, or especially, young babies need to break down after stressful events and she was really just doing what I felt like doing (but couldn't, ironically, since I had a baby to look after).

Then, without me doing anything differerent than what I had already tried over and over again, she suddenly turned off the waterworks, curled up in my arms, pulled my finger into her mouth for a good suck and gave me an heart-melting "I-love-you-Mumma" smile before going to sleep.

Live from the hospital (Anna)

After three days of waiting, C finally had her surgery and is now recovering.

Emma is a huge hit in a hospital where babies are a rarity. All the nurses are making up excuses to come into our room to see her. We are being well-looked after :)

Thanks for everyone's kind thoughts and offers of help. Much appreciated.

The Not So Trivial (Anna)

Caroline is in hospital having emergency surgery. :(

More later.

Heatwave (A)

Heatwave in Vancouver at the moment. It feels hotter than in Australia, but that's probably because nothing is set up here to deal with the heat.

We're spending lots of time at the pool.

Emma has gone back to waking up every hour and a half during the night, so we're exhausted.

We'll post some photos soon. When we get around to it. When we can be bothered.

Funny baby (Anna)

Babies are funny. We went to the Carribean festival today. Lots of interesting things to look at, great music, lovely smells, costumes, market stalls...and Emma spent a good ten minutes completely absorbed in inspecting the safety sticker on the side of her stroller, which she must have seen 100 times. 

We tried to impress upon her that she in fact has been to Jamaica (last June - she was, literally, embryonic - in fact, we found out that we were pregnant the night we got back from Jamaica), but she seemed wholly unimpressed with that news. 

We spent the evening at the outdoor pool with her, a fairly new thing and something we all enjoy. It goes something like this. Kick, kick, kick. Giggle. Raspberry. Kick, kick. Giggle, Smile. Raspberry. Shriek. Giggle. Raspberry. Kick. And that's just Caroline and me! :)

Giggling and raspberry blowing by the way are fairly new additions to her repertoire. It is guaranteed to completely melt our hearts. And today we discovered that we officially have a baby who can roll over. She did it once before about three weeks ago and then didn't repeat it, but today has now rolled over several times in a row. It's very exciting. 

Unfortunate milestones include the development of an incredibly obnoxious noise that is somewhere between a wail and a grunt, like a fire alarm that has run out of batteries. We think she is adorable but this noise most definitely is NOT, and it really, really grates on our nerves. So of course she does it all the time.  

It's just as well she's so cute.  

And we're back (Anna)

I have learnt that the first blog post after a long absence is a difficult one -I've been putting it off for days because I'm overwhelmed - there's so much that could be said.

So, a quick summary, and then we'll try to post more often.

In the last month,

I have started a new job
We have said goodbye to our old apartment and hello to our new house.
My parents -Emma's Granny Heath and Grandad - have been to visit. They helped us to move house and, of course, to welcome Emmy to the world. They spent many hours playing with their grandaughter. It was great having them around.
Emma has learnt to giggle, sit up, turn herself around and a whole lot of other things. She is now four months old. She has also begun the teething process, so there were a bit of time in there after Mum and Dad went home when we were getting very little sleep, so these posts were not a priority.

From that summary, you might understand why we have been a little absent.

But we will get better again, I promise. We'll even post some photos at some point.

I wonder if we've lost all of our readers...?