just plodding along

2008 is almost gone

so it must be time to have a look back...

january
KFC and movies (Debbie and James meet!)
Coffs Harbour
Beach Cricket
Australia Day BBQ

february
start work with TEAR

march
Camp Turnbull
Howie at Uluru

april
Zoe and Tom's wedding
Found out we were expecting Guido

may
UK & Dubai trip

june
Debbie and James engaged!
Move to Barb's

july
Guido's 19 week ultrasound

august
Adelaide holiday
We got our first fridge!

september
Move to our new house
Second wedding anniversary
We got our first washing machine!

october
My Grandpa turned 90

november
Debbie's Hens Day
Finished up at work

december
Luke and Elise's wedding
Oscar arrived

It's been a big year.

when will be baby-related posts end?

well we are home. and oscar has slept most of the day so far. which is good. although fills me with a little bit of dread about what he might be like tonight.

we got an email from our lovely greek friends kostas and eleni.

perhaps their daughter danae will be his future wife - she seems very happy he has arrived

home time

this time last week howie, tom and i were preparing to get in the car and come to my obstetrician appointment, all the while i having contractions every three minutes.

oh how things can change in a week.

so many emotions and frames of mind in such a short space of time. love, exhaustion, excitement, pain, awe, frustration, laughter, anxiety, silliness, fear, quietness, tiredness, peace, overwhelm-ment, thankfulness, tears... it's crazy!

at the moment, i am sitting here, my son beside me asleep in his plastic hospital cot, awaiting the arrival of my husband and soon-to-be-brother-in-law. that will mark the time to go home, once all the discharge procedures have been done. the paediatrician has checked oscar out and he is all good. a midwife will soon come and check me and my wound, and hopefully that will be all good.

and then it's out into the real world (with real air for the first time in oscar's life!).

please pray for us!

fun and games with the o-man!

hospital life is pretty routine in some ways. not so much in others. yesterday was pretty full on. i'm hoping that pattern isnt followed this evening. oscar likes having a full belly and will let me know if anything is lacking!

this is my favourite kind of oscar at the moment

i'm hoping he will look like that in a couple of minute. but am not holding my breath.

how cool is our son - trendy as!

maybe one day i'll write oscar's birth story. maybe not. but in short, a long active labour including nine hours of natural labouring, and then gas, pethadine, epidural, pushing and exhaustion. and then oscar not dropping necessitating a c-section. yup.

but anyway. we're just taking each moment, each day as it comes. he's a cute little thing. even if i need to be awake for him lots. and in the scheme of things, he's a very good little boy. i'm sure that could change!

Changing World

It seems the world has gotten a lot smaller in the last few days my time seems to be occupied by a certain young man, attempted sleep, a bit of pain and visitors.
Oh and eating.

This mum stuff is pretty cool but also kind of hard. Lots to learn and lots of mistakes to make. But hopefully in the end Oscar will turn out all right. If he doesn't I'm sure i can pass the buck.

Oscar

this morning at 12:07AM we welcomed Robert Oscar Howie into the world - and he shall be known as Oscar.

he is beautiful, and i'm totally not biased.

yesterday was a pretty full on day. things don't always turn out the way you hope or plan. but the important thing is that our little man is here and he is healthy. and cute!

only a couple of pics at the moment

my first cuddle with Oscar only a few minutes old

Oscar and his daddy a bit later in the day

glitter

howie has previously noted his distaste for glitter, and i would just like to affirm my support of his stance.

glitter sucks! and for some reason we keep getting christmas cards this year covered in the stuff. which ends with us being covered in the stuff. and it's not that chunky glitter that you use in kindergarten, it's the tiny speckley unwash-off-able stuff.

as much as i love christmas cards, i sometimes entertain the idea of throwing glittery ones straight in the recycling. oh scrooge that i am.

still cooking

was awake for an hour and a half or so last night with contractions about 10 minutes apart. stupid not going anywhere contractions!

it's a bit of a funny thing. physically i'm fine, despite occasional aches and pains. i'm not terribly uncomfortable or anything. and i'm not really all that fed up with being pregnant. pregnancy hasn't been awful to me, compared to how it can and does knock other people around.

it's the waiting and not knowing when part that sucks. and i think this time of year and with the wedding coming up, i'm quite conscious of the timing of things. if it was some other time, i'd happily go two weeks over without too much hassle, although it'd surely be frustrating. but i can't afford to do that. which is a bit poopy, because i really want Guido to arrive when s/he is ready, not when some medication is administered.

so fingers crossed, well actually more like lots of praying, that Guido's time is now!

2008 films

Me thinks i just saw my last film of the year, so time to recap 2008's effort -

No Country for Old Men
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Juno
Run Fat Boy Run
Vantage Point
Get Smart
Hancock
The Bank Job
Burn After Reading
Traitor
Quantum of Solace
Madagascar 2

And that keeps me on track for one cinema experience a month. It's all about movie money peoples

pets

xander gave me a good ouchy yesterday. as he jumped off my lap, he scratched my tummy, and because the skin is so stretched and thin, it bleed a fair bit and stung a LOT. it still hurts today actually. if i happen to have a baby in the next few days i wonder if the midwives will wonder how on earth i did that.

today howie took the boys outside for a bit of sun and water fun. they are cute boys. we need to keep an eye on a patch of ham's shell which is looking a bit iffy.

my three boys

hammy

piney

howiey (not so much a pet as a husband)

due today

me thinks that Guido is not joining us today.

ah well. it's gotta happen sometime!

badger

i've got to experience the joy of reliving this with a few people over the last couple of weeks. oh so funny.

but it was inspired by a serious note. howie got some stuff in the mail from tearfund UK, including a Che Guebadger tshirt.

it's promoting 'badgering' those who are in decision-making roles about overcoming poverty. so it's about advocacy.

if you're keen, you can search for superbadger on facebook.

sure it's a primarily UK campaign, but the point of it still runs true for us, and for our role in our part of the world.

tops as

a lovely evening of top gear.

so wonderful that there are new episodes on sbs on mondays. and the other day howie bought himself top gear 2.0, so we are watching the challenges DVD at the moment, having already watched the US and Polar specials over the weekend.

i very much enjoy each of the three hosts, and the stig of course. much looking forward to february's top gear live!

helloooo guidoooo

there's this forum i'm part of, and there are two girls who were each due with their first either side of me, on 16th and 19th, and they've BOTH had their baby, which both ended up being girls, one on the 8th and one on the 11th.

when's it my turn? it's really all quite weird. like obviously there is a baby in my tummy - i can feel it and i know in my head it is there. but i'm not sure that i've quite clicked that it's a little person, and that it will actually come out sometime. it's still all a bit surreal. at this stage i'm sure i'm going to be pregnant forever.

i am attempting to take advantage of still be pregnant and not being a parent. doing things like napping, hanging out with howie, watching dvds, going for a walk, enjoying being bored, pottering around. all things that will probably be a bit harder to do with a little person around.

shall we take bets as to what day you think Guido will be born?

oh dear

34 degrees?! cmon. that's no fun!

although it does guarantee dry washing.

mr chairman

we went to a church meeting tonight. i generally am a good girl and go when i can, as i am a member. howie doesn't usually go because he doesn't have to. but tonight we were sharing with the church about our work changes for next year, and howie's move to full time work with TEAR (albeit only two days of that paid).

church meetings are strange things. there is a funny level of formality and protocol. there are the times of different people voicing their different opinions. times of boringness. times of encouragement.

and there seems to often be a struggle to get the numbers needed for voting. tonight was no different. so in the end, howie got to speak to the meeting, but they couldn't vote on us because there weren't enough members. although neil affirmed this new direction for us, and echoed the diaconate's affirmation as well. so God willing it will all be voted through fine at the rescheduled meeting.

meanwhile, for some reason we're getting the australian christian channel at home. i guess that free-to-view thing has started. there's also the teachers channel, federal parliament, indigenous channel and news.

what to do?

as some of you may know, howie and i are trying to make this whole 'having a baby' thing as friendly as possible on the planet. we've gotten mostly secondhand stuff for the nursery, any clothes we've got are either second hand, fair trade and/or organic, we've got cloth nappies, most of the toys are second hand (ie. our old ones!) and anything we have bought new has been for safety or some other pretty unavoidable reason. we don't want this baby to grow up with heaps of 'stuff' just for the sake of having stuff.

the difficulty is, how do we tell people that when they are wanting to celebrate with us? how do we not offend people in their generosity?

my present concern is nappies. we've already had two people give us packets of newborn disposables. which is a lovely gesture as nappies are expensive and necessary etc. but we aren't going to use disposables (and if we do, we'll use bamboo and/or biodegradable ones). my aunt bought us the cloth nappies we wanted, and that is what we're going to use. how do we tell people this? how do we make it known? i don't know if there is anyway of saying "thanks but no thanks" if people do give us nappies.

at the hospital you are given a pack of 30 disposables to use during your time in there. i think what i might do is take in the ones we've already been given and have the hospital use our designated pack for the next person.

so, any ideas out there? how do we express these things to people who have generous hearts and good intentions before the fact?

pressies

just when you think you've only got 1 1/2 presents to go, you get an unwelcome phone call about items not being in stock now or in the foreseeable future, and suddenly your list goes from 1 1/2 back up to 3 1/2. poop. and they were good presents too!

hopefully today the problem will be solved.

mr and mrs dawson

yesterday luke and elise got married. most exciting.

elise was very beautiful

luke waiting for his bride

my husband is pretty hot

mickey the mini took us to the reception at le kiosk, shelley beach

howie and cathy

with buddies grant, cathy, debs and james

we are family! (james you have a couple more weeks til you can be in such a photo)

cutting the cake

congratulations to the newlyweds!

debs

me and debs hung out this arvo/evening. well, mostly this evening, since she spent most of the arvo part washing her car while i sat inside with the parentals and air con. oh sweet air con.

but when we did hang out it was fun! we played wii sports at her and james' place. most fun was making our own miis. and beach sports is good value, although we only got to play boules and cricket.

had some dins (mmmm pasta and sauce), and then watched the da vinci code, coz debs hadn't seen it before although she had read it.

and now home for some sleep time. although wondering when howie might be back from james' bucks.

handyman howie

the last few days howie has proved to be quite the handyman.

he's installed flyscreens on a few of the key windows around the house (like our room, the baby's room and dining room) to get some airflow that won't see me having allergic reactions left, right and centre to invading mosquitos. hooray for flyscreens.

he installed the little squirt on tom's toilet (which will be used to clean off nappies into the toilet - very clever and fun invention)

and today's eventual triumph was installing the projector mount. it took a lot of effort, no thanks to a lack of instructions.

i must admit i have a bit of fear about the projector hanging there being held by a few screws and some metal. i have complete faith in howie's ability. it's more the mount that scares me. but hoorah.

after some dins, it will be time to rearrange the lounge room to fit with the new projector location. i'll direct, since heavy lifting is a no no.

christening the bowl

this morning howie threw up for the first time since we've been married. what a milestone!

is it coincidence that we had dinner at an african restaurant last night?

hopefully it was just a once off though, and not anything more nasty. nor contagious! but that's pretty impressive for his track record - over two years since he's been physically ill, well from that end anyway.

beautiful barb

barb just popped over to give us a gift she had been making for Guido since we were living with her.

it's a crocheted woollen baby shawl...

with turtles around the edges!

how awesome is that! thanks so much barb! Guido will love it!

inappropriate

sometimes i feel sorry for my child who will grow up in this household with these two men i live with.

at least it'll be a bit of fun.

insides

so strange having so many things going on inside your own body.

firstly there's a squirming baby. that's weird in and of itself. then there's lots of tightening and contraction practice for the real thing. and then there's random moments of nausea. which is way not awesome.

my ob appointment this morning told me that the baby still isn't engaged and that now it's all just a waiting game. just what i love!

eating skippy

having done a fresh batch of dinners for the turtles yesterday, i had 500g of kangaroo mince left over. i decided it was silly to waste it, so tonight i cooked it. i'm sure lots of people eat kangaroo, so no big deal.

to me, kangaroo will always be pet food. our first cat, streaker, ate kangaroo pieces his whole life. and as one of the people who fed him, the smell of raw kangaroo meat is very familiar. and now that we include it in the turtles dinner mix, that makes three out of the four pets i've ever had in my life eating kangaroo meat.

so tonight as i cooked it, and thought about later eating it, i had a pretty big psychological hurdle to get over. but i think i did ok. i did make howie take the first bite (we had nachos, and i added a LOT of grated cheese and avocado), but i finished most of my plate. and it didn't taste awful. tasted a lot better cooked than it smells raw (strangely enough!).

needless to say i won't be going out and buying it again for my own consumption, but it wasn't the worst thing i've ever eaten.