( - : three in 15 days : - )

did I do my maths right?

today at Mummies Group: Special Edition, we had guests from out of town, to complete the "3 Babies in 15 Days" project. we even managed to get a few minutes were there was neither feeding, sleeping nor grizzling to be had, and a little Photo Op ensued.




from left to right: Min with Gemma, Speedie with the Dinghy, and Wenchilada with Persi (hope y'all don't mind I went all artistic on our arses).

and of course in my eagerness to get a photo of the three wise monkeys, I forgot to also take photies of Charlie, Torbenspang, and AJ. they were having fun, making sure that Hebedog got a run for her money, and that cakes and sammo crusts worked their way into interesting nooks that I won't find for a fortnight.

I hope you all had fun - I loved it :-)

Rolling

Sohpie started rolling yesterday. She finds it all very exciting and I love that she is excited but it is making sleeping difficult for her. She now flips over onto her stomach and then grizzles because when she is wrapped she can't get back. Normally she takes a long time to get back over onto her back anyway but she can do it, but with a wrap on plus the fact she is dog tired when I put her down she is having lots of trouble. She is so excited by her new ability and it is wonderful watching how happy she is in general when ever she rolls.

Opening my eyes

At the park today there were some older kids playing on the equipment as well as the littlies that the equipment is designed for. But the older kids were being sensible and staying away from the little ones so no one got hurt. I was standing near them while Charlie played and happened to overhear their conversation.

They started talking about how much they weighed - one said he weighed a ton, another said he weighed half a ton etc etc. Then the first lad, who I thought was a bit chubby said his real weight - 60kg. Goodness I thought, that's pretty heavy for a kid your size. Then he proudly said 'and I'm nearly nine'. Christ on a cracker! was my next thought. This kid, who at first glance I thought was a bit chubby, is the weight that I should be (to be well within my healthy weight for height range, I'm 168cm). So he's 8 years old, probably about 140cm high, and weighing in at 60kg. It can't be healthy for him to carry that much weight. That's when I realised how easy it is to forget what a kid is supposed to look like and why many parents don't seen to realise that their kids are overweight or obese.

I'm glad to be able to say that none of the other kids at the park were overweight. They all looked skinny to me, so that probably means that they are a healthy weight, like they should be.

Just a bit silly really...

I was just at the Qantas site looking at prices for taking the family to my brother-in-law's wedding in Auckland next March. Prices for two adults are pretty much what you'd expect, it's going to cost almost $1000 (return) for the two of us. What I think is outrageous is the cost of taking the kids. A four year old takes up a seat, so he pays full adult fare. Well okay I can cop that. They can't be expected to let seats go cheaper just for kids when they could get an adult fare on. It sucks but that's life.

Gemma, being under two will sit on our laps. Her ticket is 10% of the adult fare, probably to cover fuel costs that her huge (10kg?) baby body is going to add. But the real kicker is the $134 in charges and taxes that is added to her ticket. So a flight where she will sit on her parents' laps, eat her own food and not use any of the facilities is going to cost us $159.00. Just seems a bit silly to have to pay that much to take my own child out of the country, sitting on my lap. Of course if we wanted to put her in her own seat that would cost us $433.00.

Huge baby

I just saw a news bit about a 6 kg newborn, (omg Gemma is just over 6kg at nearly 5 months) and went online to see if there was anything on the interweb about it. I didn't find that story, but I did find one about a 7kg newborn, fortunately born via caesarian, in a Spanish hospital.



Photo EFE.

Apparently her firstborn was 5kg newborn, so they expected a big baby. That is one hell of a newborn.

Nurture sling

I've had the Nurture Sling for about a week now, and it's fab. It's easy and fast to put on, easy to wear, Gemma likes it, she'll go to sleep in it, it fits in my handbag when I'm not using it. In short it's everything it's maker said it would be. It has nice deep sides so bub is well held in and would take quite an effort for them to fall out, unless you were bending right over and they pitched themselves out, but that would be true for pretty much all slings I would think. It fits like a sash across your chest and the weight of the baby is on your shoulder and opposite hip. It takes about 10 minutes of wearing to get used to it but after that I found it quite comfortable, even when wearing it for a couple of hours. Best of all it should fit her up to about age 2 or too heavy to carry whichever comes first.

The only drawback that I can see is that for couples of different sizes, eg: she's petite and he's tall and broad shouldered, you would have to buy two slings because they aren't adjustable. However, for $40 per sling including postage it's still a pretty good deal. Once I have someone else to hold the camera I will post a photo of Gemma in the sling.

More Music

Here yer go!

a walk in the black forest...

look at this beautiful photo:






I can't believe the expressions on each baby's face. are they all listening to the same noise/music? could you get more differing responses? I'm presuming that they're having their hearing tested, like the SWISH programme we have in New South Wales hospitals (which I think may have a different name in different states, but I'm not sure).

unfortunately I can't remember where I found the image, so I can't credit it. it was on a blog I visited some time in the past fortnight... gah! I'm sorry, person-whose-blog-I-visited!