Wog on the blog

Regular readers will no doubt be disappointed at the lack of posts from Stu. Being the more witty of the two of us, I was relying on him to keep up the laughter or wry chuckle quota, at the very least. However, his employer have seen fit to block blogspot so he's not able to access this page - along with Facebook, photo sites and really any other website that I try to get him to look at. Many of the more senior employees have also apparently complained at the lack of access to porn.

However, he did provide me with this title, so that I could post a picture of Alice's kind gift from her Tassie rellies.

It's not really her best side.

I love a sunburnt country...A wide brown land for me

Alice and I took a stroll down to Coogee yesterday evening. Taking her out in the pram guarantees a good sleep and it was a beautiful day. We wandered past numerous other parents, who had obviously had the same idea and then along the beach - we saw joggers, beach volleyball games, numerous "boot camps", a local rugby team body surfing.... It made me very thankful to have had a baby in summer (and in Sydney). Toni and Vanessa, you have my admiration for enduring winter with a newborn! Alice doesn't even own a coat and the great outdoors is a frequenty used sleep/settling aid for us.


Alice is becoming much more interactive now. She smiles, coos and chats. We recently went to Sam and Vikky's wedding (a friend of Stu's from university) and she charmed the guests by sleeping through the service, cooing during dinner and taking a bottle quietly through the speeches. She loves music and can always be calmed by dancing about (often to her favourite John Williams CD - which her father brought to our union), so we did a little of that while the photos were being taken and the band were playing. Here we all are at the wedding. I don't know why the horizon isn't level, while we are. Anyone? Still, a beautiful place to get married - I think you'll agree. I can quite see why they didn't go back to Thame to do it.






And the other reason we love living in Australia? Childhood experts here advocate dummies for the first 3 months at least. Thank goodness for some peace!

Sleeping beauty

The good life continues with Alice sleeping until 6.30am for 3 nights running now. 2 of these may have been assisted by Baby Panadol, following a round of immunisation shots. Poor little thing. Would it be wrong to use that when she doesn't have a fever, I wonder?! Kidding.

We have also fixed the grumpy evenings - see photo - using the Sydney climate to our advantage!

And all this sleep means better and longer daytime naps, with a much happier baby. However she did miss out on hanging out with her friends by sleeping through a recent outing to Watsons Bay - left to right, from youngest upwards: Marley, Alice, Izzy and Lila.

Mostly contented little baby

A quiet few days has worked a treat and Alice has stopped screaming at the sight of other humans, which is a big relief. She's been sleeping well in the day and last night even managed 11 - 6.30am. I didn't, of course. Got up to check she was breathing at least twice.

She was doing so well that we managed a picnic at Coogee with Auntie Cate. Cate claims to have taught Alice a very important life lesson - see photo...

Alice looks up and over the fence

Stop all the clocks...

Well, dear reader, it's been a tumultuous few days with tantrums every time someone apart from the lady with the food supply holds little Alice. This has made us all pretty grumpy and resulted in some interesting situations - not being able to stop feeding her while sneaking away from a huge, vicious-looking, black swan which came after us in Centennial Park, and this morning, jiggling and comforting her during a waxing appointment. I would hate to have to repeat the latter - it didn't help me relax at all!

Following a good long nap this afternoon, we have a different baby, who smiled at her Daddy on arrival home and is now cat-napping on him pre-bath. Thank goodness. We have cancelled baby yoga and mothers group tomorrow and are going to stay home - just me and Little Al, hanging out and watching a few DVDs (me) and get some good rest (both of us). Who knows, we may even have a little stroll to the post office to send Auntie Beth's birthday present. There's been a tantrum every time we've passed it so far this week. But only if she gets her rest. Time to make that a little more of a priority than getting to Westfield Bondi Junction every other day!!

All smiles

Alice started smiling while falling asleep very early on. She is now smiling at her two other favourite times of the day - when we go to take her out of the cot and when a boob is being proffered.

This morning I tried to capture the cot moment (I'll spare you the boob moment) on camera. As with my famous Hong Kong pink dolphin and Port Stephens whale photos, I kept missing the vital moment. There's a before and after shot and finally she decided she was bored with waiting for me to get her out and pooed instead - at the very moment of the camera click. She looks a bit shifty during that one.

Before



After



Doing something else altogether

First trip to the pub

Alice recently enjoyed a trip to the Dolphin Hotel in Surry Hills for her Uncle Tom Lord's birthday. She had such fun that she slept through the whole thing. However, for regular readers who don't have access to Facebook, here's a shot of her outfit.

Routines - not a routine matter

Alice has been in quite a good pattern for 2-3 weeks now. The pattern of our day is based around 3 hourly feeds with 1 longer stretch at night and 1 longer stretch in the morning (if she's allowed!).

So we're up at 7am with breakfast TV - I now know all the presenters intimately, although this hasn't given me any higher a regard for their intellect. Then we both go back to bed until 10 or so - for this sleep, Alice seems to be able to settle herself, as long as the aforementioned presenters have been kept to a low volume - I think they offend her too. After a feed, we usually go out for a walk or a shop or a mothers group and are often still out and about for the 1pm feed - I've come to know the feeding rooms at the local shopping mall very well - which are clean, which have well positioned arm rests to help support her increasingly heavy head (must be that very clever brain) and which have a Starbucks or a Dough Espresso nearby.

These outings mean that we usually get 2 good sleeps during the day, but from then the fun starts. 5-6 is a lottery as her moods go and 7-9 can usually be relied upon to be sulky. But after a bath and a feed, the nights are great. She (touch wood) sleeps from 11 - 4 and then again from 5-7. So all in all not too bad. If I could only get her to sleep in the cot when we are at home, I'm sure she would reach the perfect 10.

But the fun bit of the routine is the weekly stuff. Alice likes to get out and about amongst her little friends and has regular mothers group meetings with Lila, Izzy, Marley and Makayla, as well as Charley, Charlie, Charlotte, Claire and Oliver. Fridays are busy, with baby yoga and one of the mothers groups. Last week Alice performed her yoga postures (lying on her back, getting a kiss during one where I had to bend down) and cooed along with baby Leonard (!) Apart from all the Charlies, we haven't met 2 babies with the same name yet, but calling your baby Leonard seems to me to be going a bit far in a search for originality.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (or an account of Alice antics in sunny Sydney)

Alice is 6 weeks old now and everyone tells me that life is now much easier (as you will see from our picture from early yesterday evening - we've boundless energy now!). So, under pressure from the Bradleys, I find myself with no more excuses to avoid blogging her life. Alice has to keep up with Madison after all. Hopefully this will also help with the continual requests for photos from friends and family who really need to get down with the kids and get onto Facebook.

Babies seem to have 2 big early milestones - 6 weeks and 3 months. I'm not sure what was supposed to happen yesterday to change our world but thankfully nothing really did, as she really is a great baby. Indeed her father was heard to give her an 8 out of 10, "as babies go". Given his vast experience of the little blighters, I'm sure Alice would be overjoyed to hear this. It does raise my competitive hackles, however, so I'll be looking to up the ante and get her a higher score next time he is rating her.

I'm pretty sure I'll never find the time to go back over the last 6 weeks in any great detail so please allow me to move on from here. So long as we find the time to post again...