Almost entirely about poo

 One of the expected joys of parenthood is awaiting the event that will provide a humorous poo anecdote with which to regale others. Once parents have such material the story can then be trotted out to turn the stomach of childless friends and repeated annually at Christmases and birthdays to embarrass the child as they grow and mature. The first three months passed us by without us any remarkable poo action from our baby. Certainly there could be cause to comment on quantities or frequency of defecation from the lad but this appears somewhat lame and uninspiring compared to others’ tales of the time when the wee one unleashed a wave of excrement onto an elderly aunt or the neighbour’s cat.

However, Dominic decided yesterday that it was time to finally use his bodily functions to provide the material for such a tale.

Our ante natal group decided to meet up for lunch as we hadn’t really bothered in ages and other more organised groups made us feel our slackness acutely. One member had moved in her brand new home about two weeks ago and chose to host the event. We had a tour of the new residence once we had all gathered and it appeared to be to all present a lovely new flash house with copious amounts of space and all the modern conveniences the wealthy young family could want for.

After several minutes of making cute gooing noises and smiling at his baby chums, Dominic decided to drown out the chatter by unleashing a thunderous bout of flatulence. Such an occurrence might be considered rude in other company but at a mums and babies gathering it is pretty much the usual*. However, I detected a warm and wet sensation in my hand that allowed me to deduce that it was not merely gas that had erupted from young Dominic.

I asked to use the change table as the carpet looked nice and new so that even with a change mat I feared to disrobe the lad on it.

The change table in the nursery was quite a sight. It had the appearance and slightly smug demeanour of an elaborately decorated pink and white wedding cake. This change table somehow knew its place in life and its place within the centre of an exceedingly flash and overwhelmingly pink nursery.

However, the owners of this change table were sensible people. If one has a very fancy change table with a very pretty doily thing over the top, there are only two courses of action to prevent it becoming soiled.

One: never use the change table for any actual babies. Two: cover the top of the table in protective fabrics.

They had opted for the second option with considerable enthusiasm. The table was suitably shielded from coming in contact with any poo by the presence of a thick fluffy pick towel and on top of this lay a starched white cloth nappy. However, the sight of the pristine cloth nappy also concerned me; I had seen what Dominic can do to pristine white cloth nappies. So I decided to protect these protective surfaces with my own portable change mat and the unironed cloth nappy from my own bag. Having laid these out I felt I could safely put young Dominic down without the risk of unsightly stains.

Upon placing the lad down I noticed that the situation was dramatically worse than I had first suspected. The poo had not exploded though the nappy, but it had burst though both sides of his stretch and grow to smear itself over most of his hips, legs, my t-shirt and finally, splattering onto my right arm. I pulled out the packet of baby wipes and got to work. I cleaned up his legs and myself, carefully rolled up the bottom end of his stretch and grow so as to not spread further poo onto my son, and prepared a bag to put the devasted nappy into. I undid the nappy, not with the dark foreboding you might expect, but with the confident ease of a mother who has dealt with many a dirty nappy before. However, I was not ready for what lay before me.

Never before had I conceived of so much poo. I felt both amazed the nappy had been able to contain as much of it as it had and vaguely astonished that a baby could apparently excrete about 50% of their own body weight and not seem particularly disturbed. In fact, Dominic was smiling happily, delighted at his achievement.

I quickly mopped up as best I could and somehow got the overflowing nappy into the bag taking care not to let it lean to either side as that could had been catastrophic. I thought I was almost done in the cleaning up when disaster struck. With a sudden and ominous sound prophesying war, a mighty fountain momently was forced from the Dominic and a flood of poo surged forth. Without a nappy to slow down the coursing river of poo, it ran in all directions on the change mat threatening to make it way beyond my own protective borders onto the change table. Dominic giggled in sheer ecstasy of his work and began to kick his legs out of pleasure causing not only his feet to become covered but he was now also splashing his poo about to splatter on my arms as I desperately attempted to block the poo.

Just when things could not get any worse, they did. For Dominic decided the only thing that could possibly increase his enjoyment of his glorious achievement was to starting peeing. A mighty stream of urine burst forth in a triumphant arc celebrating his work. Tearing wipes out of the packet like a maniac, I managed to cover the offending organ and soak up the majority of the pee but alas enough liquid had already spilt onto the poo-covered mat to start their own little streams that would trickle their way off the mat onto the table as well.

So scores of wipes and sacrificing the remaining clean fabric of Dominic's stretch and grow, the mess was somehow cleaned up. I bagged his clothes and the unfortunate change mat, and changed Dominic into some clean clothes. Picking up Dominic, I surveyed the damage. There were prominent stains on three sides of the starched white cloth nappy and alas the poo had found its way past the towel onto the pretty pink layer of the table. On the bright side, it hadn’t breached those perimeters and made it onto the new carpet.

Cringing I peeled off the dirtied layers and trotted off to ask where the laundry was. It was too early to pretend like another baby had done it. Our host was very gracious and understanding, even though I doubt whether any baby in the history has ever managed to make such a prodigious mess without being terribly ill or possessed by some sort of demonic entity.

Oh dear, he has just woken up and is now sitting on my lap being adorably cute to try to guilt me into censoring out tales of his poo. Well I’ll post this but spare him from telling it at Christmas. I’ll probably have something much better by then.

* When it is the babies farting. I believe etiquette dictates that whilst it is OK for young mothers to get their breasts out in order to breastfeed, motherhood does not provide one with right to burp, fart, drool or spill food out of their mouth that is afforded to babies.

Oh and here is a cute picture.

Detention Artwork

Drawn on the whiteboard during detention, about two feet tall or so:



I like drawing on whiteboards :-)

Dominic practises modelling

He is a much photographed baby - the papparazi even hound him during a supposedly relaxing massage!

Dominic has a mighty kick!

As seen at the very end of this clip:



And here's how big he is, in a cute pair of overalls (there are some upsides to cold days after all!):



Tomorrow Dom gets his 3 month jabs, and I get a student teacher for a month!

Fun with Dom

This is a very nice way to get some looking-after-Dominic and some lying-down-on-the-sofa-after-a-long-day at the same time:



Also, Debbie has blogged about parenting courses, suburban mothers, and stuff.

Middle-class Motherhood

 I had my first session of the growing baby course at the Plunket centre today. It seems that parenthood these days requires a lot of courses - ante natal, baby and you (first six week course) and now this. This course is run by Plunket rather than the local Parents' centre so it has the rather dubious distinction of having no charge. I thought the fact it was free and run by Plunket meant that it would have somewhat more of a melting pot attendance. The previous courses had been peopled entirely by white, educated, well-off 30 somethings (on the whole, there were a couple of late twenties and early 40s) who seemed to have fairly recently moved to Kapiti to breed*. The complete lack of diversity in age, class and culture I feel is somewhat sad, and hopefully not representative of the current 'mini baby boom'. I fear what classrooms will be like in 13 years time if only the yuppies breed. Imagine 30 young faces peering out of their designer outfits as they sup on organic cappucinos with their iPod booting out whiney cafe pop songs whilst bitterly debating the failings of their summer holidays in timeshares on the Gold Coast. I arrived a little early and as I sat in the Plunket room watching the other mothers arrive, it dawned on me. This course was going to be the same too. In fact I already knew about half of the mums there from previous courses and yoga pregnancy classes! As I and the fifteen other mums sat around and, as we were instructed, introduced ourselves by stating name, baby's name and what job we had in our 'former lives'**, it seemed that this was not going to be a diverse group in any socio-economic terms. A PR consultant, an editor, another teacher, an accountant, someone who ran a dental recruitment agency, a salon owner etc. Looking around the room was equally disturbing. In front of every woman's seat was a neat little car capsule with a Lamaze stuffed toy danging down from the handle. Designer nappy bags stuffed fill with pump bottles of water, and everything that could possibly be needed for any baby situation from a change of clothes to hypoallergenic wipes and powders. Wide-eyed babies from 7 weeks to 6 months sat on their mothers' laps in their trendy baby warm outfits (that everyone was secretly happy about because the hot summer had not allowed for the wearing of fuzzy rompers and jumpers). The mums wore their non-maternity jeans, quietly smug to have got their post-baby bodies (or should that be 'not former-life bodies') into normal clothes again and sat around telling each other that they were looking good***. The weird thing was that the course didn't really seem to provide much in the way of useful information. It just seemed like the facilitator was getting people to discuss what they already knew about parenting. I had hoped that some expert knowledge would be passed out but sadly not. Then the facilitator recommended some Baby book and everyone's ears pricked up. I realised the sad truth. These women, like me, had desperately been searching for 'the secret'. It is like as soon as you get pregnant part of your brain sets out on a epic quest to find the Holy Grail of being the perfect mother. You try to assimilate as many books, advice, magazines, and parenting programmes as possible to arm yourself with all the information necessary to conquer motherhood. All our lives we've been led to believe that you can excel at anything if you just study enough, or practise enough or try hard enough. Our education system and our professional lives are based around the notion that knowledge and practise will lead to us being able to master any new skill. We are convinced that there is nothing we can't go on a course to learn how to do, or read a book to gain knowledge on, or even google to find the answer to a question. Then you have a baby and there is a whole industry on writing baby books and parenting advice, there are so many toys, equipment and gadgets to buy to help with every imaginable baby issue. You apply the same strategy that you have for everything else in life. You read every book, buy the toys that claim to stimulate and aid your baby's development, you even listen to the advice handed out by your parents, friends, midwife, plunket nurse and even the little old ladies that come up and gurgle over your baby in the supermarket. But, there are two laws that dictate everything to do with babies: 1. Everything you ever do will both be the WRONG thing to do according to some books, advice and little old ladies and simultaneously be the RIGHT thing to do according to other books, advice and, occasionally, little old ladies. 2. Any technique you use to deal with wind, crying, breast feeding, sleeping etc will probably work brillantly on some days and fail miserably on others. There is also a third that sometimes applies that whenever you tell someone that your baby has a good sleep routine, or sleeps though the night, they will immediately stop this behaviour. So I guess this is why there are all these courses attended by women who have already probably read dozens of books on babies and, at the end of the day, have perfectly successfully looked after their babies for months already. It is because no matter how many things you buy, or how hard you try or what advice you follow, there are some moments on some days when no matter what you do you feel like you're failing to be the parent you want to be. That can be very difficult to cope with if you are a person who has always been success in their career. It's not that being a full-time mother isn't rewarding or fun, most of the time it is both joyous and it does feel like you have achieved something extremely worthwhile every day. But when, for whatever reason, your baby is crying and it has been a difficult day, you do find yourself wishing you had read just one more book or gone on one more course that might have contained a suggestion of what you could now do that would magically calm your baby down and restore your confidence and enjoyment of motherhood. So even though part of me shudders when I see 15 SUVs crammed into the small Plunket car park, I'll continue attending this seven week course. Apparently we even get a certificate at the end of it, and maybe they might even finally reveal the much-sought secret of being the perfect parent. * I am coming to believe that Kapiti is mostly populated by former urbanites who move to start a family or retire, in some rare cases both. ** This is an apparently hilarious joke whereby you refer to your life before you had a baby as your 'former life' and, if you really want to have the room in hysterics, your 'past life experience'. *** Immediately after giving birth 'looking good' means that you don't look like you have just crawled out of a 5 km steam tunnel to escape a zombie attack only to be mistaken for a zombie at the other end and been beaten to within an inch of your life with a baseball bat****. After that 'looking good' means that you seem to have lost weight. **** I not sure why my brain likens the 'beautiful miracle' of giving birth to surviving a zombie apocalypse but it does. I suppose I imagine that if I had to face a mass of zombies it would take a similar level of endurance to survive, and that, hopefully, one's instincts and hormones would take over in the same way as they do during labour, and you'd find out that you are tougher and kick more ass than you would have thought. Although realistically, I'd rather give birth again than face a zombie attack. Other people I care about would suffer in the zombie attack for one thing and the whole world around you would change into a dark, squalid, derelict place filled with horror and despair. Hmm, actually spending several days after the birth in Wellington Hospital wasn't entirely unlike a post-apocalypse experience.

I mow my lawn at 7:30am

Getting older is an odd process. Debbie and I now have a son (as long-time readers may have inferred), and I've been working full time for a while now (one year of full-time study, 7 years work in the past 8?). I'm also over 30 years of age, and I think I'm starting to notice some fairly substantial changes in my life: *I have a lawn of my own. This means I need to think about mowing it. I sometimes do this, and am even tempted to mow the lawn very early in the morning on a Saturday from time to time (though I think 8:30am is the earliest I've ever actually gone out and done it). *I don't sleep in often. Like, maybe one weekend day in four I'll sleep past 8:30. This morning I was up before 7am (though I probably wouldn't have been if Dominic hadn't decided he was done with sleep for the morning. He's asleep again now, but I'm all awake) *I rarely drink. I certainly don't drink heavily 2-3 weekends per month, nor do I go to parties frequently. *I have grey hairs. Quite a few of them, actually. I also have at least one or two awesome double-thickness crazy white Gandalf hairs. They came in first, well before the greys, and they hide in my hair and only occasionally pop out for my amusement. *I have money, but don't buy stuff sometimes. Like, there are loads of toys* I want to buy, and I probably could buy them, but I don't. Go figure. There are many other things, but now I must go mow my lawn. And shake my walking stick angrily at passing kids. * Toys like a 3ccd video camera with mic and headphones plugs for under $700, and a teeny tiny laptop, and wireless internet for the house to go with the teeny tiny laptop, and an LCD TV for the bedroom, and freeview...

I like to ride my bicycle

Thanks to a very kind moo-ma and moo-pa, I now have a shiny bike to ride to school. My travel time has decreased from something like 13-15 minutes to something around about 6-7 minutes each way. This is awesome, and not in any significant way environment destroying, which is way cool (car travel time = 5 minutes). It means I can now pop home during a non-contact or lunch hour! Previously it took half an hour to walk home and back, leaving very little at-home time in a 45 minute luch hour. Now it's closer to 12-14 minutes travel time, effectively inverting the home/travel ratio. I have stoppped reading books on my way to and from school, but have taken up listening to Terry Pratchett audio books on my mp3 player, 7 minutes at a time. It's going to take me a while to work my way through an unabridged book, but I am still getting a daily literary fix (in addition to the books I have to read for school). Oh yeah, I read 'Martyn Pig', a book about a kid dealing with disposing of his dad's corpse, and am now reading 'In My Father's Den' for school. I chose good books for my classes to study this year :-)

Stinking Hot

It's not that hot today, but my classroom is an oven. Stupid tiny windows which have security latches to stop them opening all the way, and heat-generating students in classes of 28-29 at a time, heating the place up. I look forward to the 2 or 3 days between summer and winter where the classroom is comfortable (before we get into the odd binary winter where the central heaters are either on, and the classroom is unbearably stuffy, or off, and the classroom is an icebox).

Meme? I do a meme now?

Your soul is painted the color yellow, which embodies the characteristics of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, hope, liberalism, sociability, friendship, death, courage, intellect, confidence, communication, travel, movement, attraction, persuasion, and charm. Yellow is the color of the element Air, and symbolizes the sun, grain, and the power of thought.

The Simile

As taught to my Y9 class: A simile is a comparison made using like or as. For example, 'as big as a house', or 'watching us like a hawk', or as angry as a PE teacher with deflated balls. A few of the kiddies giggled at that one ;)

CT Scan and Results

So, last Monday Dominic had a traumatic time in hospital, getting his arms twisted and squeezed to make the veins stick out, having a big needle stuck in the back of his hand, and then having his chest scanned. There were multiple attempts at the scan, which required him to lie still. We'd been told by a neonatal nurse that the plan was to either get the baby to sleep through it by feeding him, or else to sedate him. It turned out the staff doing the CT were opposed to sedation, so they kept telling us to go into the brightly lit, noisy, windy (it was a very windy day and there were doors open everywhere) waiting room and "get your baby to go to sleep". Incredibly he did settle each time, but woke up when they decided to take his clothes off, inject contrast dye, switch on the machine etc. On the third time he woke up they abandoned the sleep plan and got Debbie to put her finger in his mouth to suck on and stroke his head, and he stayed still enough for the scan. We got the results yesterday, and it's a mixed bag. He does have a CCAM. It's at the top of the lower lobe of his right lung. We knew this already. Because of the position, it can't simply be snipped out. If it is taken out, it will have to be a lobectomy - losing one of three lobes in the right lung. This is a slightly bigger surgery, and while the outcome is similar (you can get on fine without one lobe) it's not as simple a surgery. So, the new plan is to keep an eye on it and see if it causes any trouble. If not, Dom won't have surgery. If it does cause infections or anything, the operation will go ahead. So, not really good news, but at least he doesn't have to have an operation this year.

Currently Watching

Outrageous Fortune, genius NZ comedy/drama. We borrowed the first season on DVD from a colleague, and were hooked after one episode (really hooked after two). He's bringing the second season in shortly for us. It's a very funny, compelling show with a range of characters who are really engaging. Top class work - and only $28 a season on DVD at the Warehouse! Teachers - genius Brit comedy about high school teachers. My brother picked up the DVDs on special from amazon.co.uk, and it's fantastic to rewatch (and in the case of episodes we missed on TV see for the first time). Very silly, sarcastic, biting, and filled with vicarious pleasures :-) We're also watching House on TV (even though that means we've skipped a season), and will probably get back into watching Lost, several episodes at a time (it's a bit unsatisfying to watch in a drip-fed week-by-week way, but save up 4 or 5 episodes and binge every now and then and it becomes (for us) quite an enjoyable show). On the shelf, ready to go are the Family Guy Star Wars special (Blue Harvest), and the first two episodes of the Sarah Connor Terminator TV show (not, I think, a sitcom, but we shall have to watch it to find out).

The terrifying tale of titty mouse and tatty mouse

A few days ago Debbie and I sat down to read Dominic a story from the quite respectable looking "The Classic Purnell Edition Great Children's Stories (1975)". The first story that caught Debbie's eye was the tale of Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse. We began to read it to Dominic, but didn't get past the first page.

We should have been warned. The story ought to have a disclaimer at the start.

The full text of this children's classic is available on the internet here. I shall give you a quick summary, allowing you to be forewarned about the horrors of the tale.

1. Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse live in a house together. They are hungry, so they go pick some corn.
2. They come back and each make a pudding on the stove, but when Titty Mouse puts her pudding into the pot "the pot tumbled over, and scalded her to death."
3. Tatty Mouse is sad, and the furniture asks her why. As each piece of furniture learns the sad news, it nuts out in some way.
4. The tree, bird, and little girl outside each find out about the death, and nut out (losing leaves, shedding feathers, spilling milk).
5. The old man next door who is thatching his roof finds out. “Oh!” said the old man, “then I’ll tumble off the ladder and break my neck,” so he tumbled off the ladder and broke his neck."
6. The tree falls over, destroying Tatty and Titty's house, and Tatty is buried under the rubble.

The end.

Seriously, what happened to Joseph Jacobs to make him lose it so badly that he wrote this 'children's tale'? What exactly is the message? Don't share bad news, or else people will randomly kill themselves and you'll be crushed under their corpses? Don't grieve in public or you'll upset the neighbours? Mice, even the pudding-making anthropomorphised ones, are all evil and bring nothing but trouble to the idyllic countryside?

What. the. hell?

Here's a cute photo as a palette cleanser:

Perfume, cute photos, clothes and such

Debbie and I watched Perfume last night (actually we watched most of it last night, then I fell asleep (we were watching it in bed), so we watched the end this morning). I found it to be quite an odd, but a very compelling film. I thought they did a great job of using a visual medium to show how powerful a character's response to smells were. The fact that the actor playing the main character was Pingu from Nathan Barley (a very funny, adult Brit comedy) made me feel sympathetic to the lead character, even when he was killing people.

I missioned out to Harvey Norman today to print off some photos, both for my office at school and for the photo album. I got a large copy of this photo, 'cos it's quite a cutey:



And for anyone who's interested, Dominic now fits some 3-6 month clothing rather well:



Coming soon: The terrifying tale of Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse - or what happens when children's book writers have nervous breakdowns.

War stories

First lesson with my Year 12 students. Course outline says typing up homework is good, but printer breaking down is no excuse. Teacher: Of course, if your printer breaks down you can always email me your work. Here is my school email address. Please don't email me for personal stuff, like 'Hey mister, how's it going.' Work stuff only. *pause* Teacher: Except when you leave school, then if you want to email me in a couple of years to tell me what you're doing, say hi, that's cool. You know, if you've joined the Air Force and you want to email me and say "Hey Mr, I'm in the airforce and I just shot a bunch of Iraqi's." That's cool. *pause, horrified looking students* Teacher: Well, that's not cool, y'know, not that particular thing. Hopefully nobody will be gunning down Iraqi's in a couple of years, but you get the idea.

Outdoors with Dominic

We took the little man outside after school today to check out some dandylions and stuff. It was neat. Debbie has already got him to feel the grass under his feet, and he quite enjoys it. Yesterday he weighed in at 5.53kg, which is a healthy gain (slightly slower than his previous weight gain, but pushing him one or two percentage points up from the national average).

I am very glad that it's the weekend.

Wanted

For a few weeks I've been in the interesting state of non-want. There weren't any consumer purchases other than food that I wanted to make. Usually there's some kind of gadget, or household item, or DVD, or book, or something that I'd idly like to pick up. For a while I wanted a plastic collander, but it seems less important now than it did in those heady days of the end of the holidays. Now there are at least two things I want to buy. Well, I'd be happy to pick them up for free by borrowing them, but failing that I'm getting ready to shell out some dosh. 1. A bike. I currently walk to school, and it's very pleasant and I get a lot of reading done. The reason I'm sorely tempted to get a bike is a simple one - I could get home faster, and thus be able to sneak home at lunchtime, or during non-contact time, and see my lovely family. I don't want to drive as it's unhealthy from both an exercise and polluting-my-environment POV, so a bike is a great speed/environment/$ compromise. 2. House season 3 (and 4). We borrowed the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2 from Luke and Sam, and it's an awesome show. We'd very much like to see the next season ASAP. Is the season that just started on TV here season 4? We watched the first episode of that just after finishing season 2, and it was neat, but there's clearly a lot we've missed out on. So, anyone got House to lend us, or a surplus bike? I'm thinking Trademe is a good place to look for a bike...

This is not a baby picture

I think the cat is getting a little sick of us paying so much attention to an entity which is not,at the end of the day, our cat. Worse, she has been evicted from our bedroom where she used to sleep. This photo represents the first in a series of civil unrest protests the cat has staged. We expect all manner of protest actions in the next few weeks and months, until we eventually cave in and let her back in with us (which will probably be when Dominic moves into his own room, and we can shift our focus to keeping the cat out of his room, rather than a whole wing of the house...).

Back to work

It had to happen eventually, but in about ten minutes I have to return to work. It's been a fantastic summer holidays, the best ever for obvious reasons, and it's a sad thing that I have to go spend time away from my family. On the up side, my work days aren't exactly long, and I'm not far from home, so I should be able to pop home for the odd lunch here and there :-)

Photos, again!



This is part of Dominic's daily workout, exercising away on his baby gym. That's right, it's not a play mat, it's a gym. For the buff babies.



And here's Dom working out with a personal trainer on his swiss ball. OK, it was Debbie's swiss ball, but Dom has more or less inherited it now. It's really good for encouraging him to lift his head and shoulders, and apparently good for developing his sense of balance.

The many faces of Dominic

Dominic is having a growth spurt at the moment, which basically means he's spending most of his waking hours feeding. In between feeds we managed to snap a couple of photos of him:









It's quite entertaining, the range of expression the little guy has. He's also on a continual learning curve, mastering such awesome skills as 'push with feet whilst parents make you dance the charleston by bouncing you around on the floor' and 'lie on a swiss ball and be really, really fascinated by household objects'. He managed to grip a rattle for a few seconds today (once I'd coaxed his fingers around it) and would have happily bashed himself in the head with it three times if I hadn't had my fingers in the way :-)

Why do I love dice so much?

I have a lot of dice. More dice than I need for just about any game (except Dogs in the Vineyard and Princes' Kingdom). So why do I see dice at Kapcon and think that I'd like more? I guess it might be a bit like many of the purchases I make. I tend to think about things and shop around, and even after I buy something like a TV, I still notice the prices and features of other TVs in the shops for a long time afterwards - sometimes months, sometimes longer. Dice have been a desirable commodity since I was about ten or so, and I haven't actually bought dice on many occasions. I have bought a pound'o'dice, and then a few individual die to fill in the gaps, so now I have all the dice I sensibly need, and more. But I still covet pounds'o'dice, and interesting sets of dice.

Moving through stages

It's really nice to see a variety of people who are at different stages of the whole starting a family thing. At kapcon today I talked to people with preschoolers, with babies, and those who are about to become parents. It's really nice to see where people who are ahead of us are, and also to be able to chat to someone who is getting close to starting a family. I like that our birth story is a positive one, and while there were things that were really difficult to deal with, we don't have and 'horror stories', just things that we found tough. One of the hardest things for us was the hospital stay, and the uncertainty of not knowing when we'd be able to take Dominic home (the comment about not being allowed to take him home in case he 'fell off the perch' overnight and us and Wellington Hospital ended up on the front page of the Dominion Post was not a great way to end our third day in hospital). The actual total number of days in hospital wasn't too bad, but the uncertainty and mixed messages were hard to deal with. But apart from that probably common experience, Debbie's pregnancy and labour, though tough, were relatively 'normal', and our first six weeks with Dominic have been the best 6 weeks of my life. So, it's great to see people with new babies, people with toddlers, people starting out on the whole pregnancy journey - it helps me to appreciate how far we've come, to look ahead to what's coming up, and hopefully to be able to talk encouragingly to those who are starting out. Every baby and every delivery is different, so I don't feel like I can offer anyone any advice, but I can honestly and happily talk about how cool the whole starting-a-family thing is, and all the awesome stuff that we've learned and done so far :-)

Busy Week

Whew! I know I'm still on holiday, but that was a busy week. It featured a quite pointless visit to the hospital, a Baby and You class, preparations for Kapcon, a Plunket visit and our last midwife visit, and then Kapcon itself. We also walked to a cafe on Friday, which was very nice, and probably did some other stuff too. Oh, we had a plumber come round and cut a hole in the deck to gain access to the 'gully', the kind of master drain for the house - it was blocked, and causing bad smells and minor flooding under the house. It's all good now, and the bathroom has gone back to smelling nice - especially so because of the delicious Lush soap that's in the shower at the moment. We're looking forward to seeing photos from Kapcon up on the web, and are already talking about the kinds of games we want to run for kids groups in five or six years. I think the idae of a roleplaying game which includes activities, like making paper hats so your characters can sneak onto a pirate ship, or doing a treasure hunt to get all the parts you need to build a machine would be cool. Gaming with movement and arts-and-crafts would be neat. I'm thinking about maybe writing and running such a game for adults in a couple of kapcons' time, as a way to practice for when the kids are old enough :-) I can think of a few gamers who'd be up for making newspaper costumes and completing physical challenges for sticker rewards to put on their character sheets...

A week of firsts

So, busy week this last week with Baby and You classes (follow-up to antenatal - with me as the only guy in a room full of mums and babies (though some of the babies were boys)), Dominic's first shower (he really enjoys showers, it turns out), our first time jogging with Dominic in the stroller (managed 25 minutes today), and his first visit back to hospital since being discharged 5 weeks ago.

The hospital visit was positive, though fairly pointless. We drove all the way down for a ten minute appointment, during which the specialist basically told us 'we need to get a CT scan, then see how he's doing'. Which we've known since we left hospital. The good part is that there was no bad news, but we really could have just talked on the phone for 5 minutes, since he didn't do more than glance at Dominic - no listening to his breathing, tapping his chest, nothing. At least the news was good. Oh, and the possible operation time could be as soon as 6 months - though we won't know for sure until after the CT.

Lastly, here's a cool imperius picture :-)

One Month Old Today

Not me, obviously, but the little man. We bought him a baby gym as a present :-)



We decided not to let him play with the plastic bag wrapping stuff it came in, for one because it's not as much fun as a box, and two there's a certain amount of choking hazard in little babies playing with plastic bags. Even if they are the most beautiful things in the world.

We were pleased to see that Dominic was at least mildly entertained by his new toy - and hopefully will become more so as he grows older.




Movies Seen on DVD
We've watched a few dvds in the past couple of days - Die Hard 4.0, Simpsons Movie, 28 Weeks Later and Blades of Glory. I enjoyed all of them to some extent. Here's my extent-o-metre ratings:

Die Hard 4.0 - a fun action movie with a pretty good cast. Not hugely Die Hardish, or particularly plot-clever, but a fun movie to watch with some impressive stunts. I liked the really dumb rock song about Die Hard that's on the DVD, and the interview with the band. 3/4 extent of enjoyment.

Simpsons Movie - just like watching a 2 part tv episode, but with some oddly unnecessary CG animation thrown in. No more (or better) jokes than most of the good TV episodes. So OK, but not really an 'event' movie. A mildly amusing 5/11.

Blades of Glory - exactly as stupid and fun as I was expecting. Perfectly pitched for the sleep deprived, with strong performances from all cast members (I'm getting to quite like Will Ferrel). 26/38.

28 Weeks Later - worth a post of its own, this was a great horror movie in my opinion. Tense, well put together, and with characters who didn't make a bunch of frustratingly silly decisions. Debbie and I particularly liked the selfish life-preserving actions of Robert Carlyle at the start, and the 'kill everyone' back-up plan that the military put into action. A pleasant exploration of the 'everyone does the right thing and they're still screwed' situation. Well scary. 12 corpses out of a bakers' dozen.

Yet more Dominic

There will be non-baby content here occasionally, though right now I am obviously quite baby-obsessed :-) I guess maybe I shouldn't have told him that milk comes from cows?

Head lifting

Debbie takes the credit for this rather awesome shot of what is, I think, Dominic's longest and most vertical head lift so far!

Also, British comedy series 'That Mitchell and Webb Look' is really, really cool. It's a fun sketch show in the tradition of Alas Smith and Jones, with some great recurring characters. Well recommended (though we only have 4 episodes so far (of 6) - damn data cap!).

4 weeks old

This was Dominic yesterday, at 4 weeks of age:


And this was the day before, with Dominic enjoying some time on his stomach.



He can now lift his head up for about 12 seconds, and if you give him something to push off (like your hand) he can 'commando crawl' a couple of feet. He tries to hook his toes in to the ground, but hasn't quite sorted that out yet. This is a good thing, since as soon as he does get his toes sorted he'll be able to propel himself all over the place if he's ever on his tummy. He can't roll over yet, so we're safe for a while, but we're already looking at the house and pondering how big a job baby-proofing it is going to be.

Full time parenting

The past 3 and a half weeks have been really, really cool. Being a new parent, whilst tiring, is fantastic. It's also pretty amazing that it's been the summer holidays for me, so I've been able to spend pretty much all my time with Dominic and Debbie (I did pop in to work on the Thursday after he was born for a few hours). It's a huge life change, and it is wonderful. For those interested, Dominic's weight gain since we got home has been a steady 40 - 45 grams a day, and though it's hard to get him to stretch out for measuring we think he's about 2-3cm longer now than he used to be. He's already started outgrowing some of his newborn clothes (he's in a 0-3 month outfit today (000), and the length is perfect).

3 weeks old

Well, that 3 weeks went by in a blur. On the one hand, it feels like it's gone by pretty quickly. On the other hand, it felt like we were in hospital for a really long time, and pre-Dom feels like a lifetime ago. Time is a strange thing. Dominic seems to like being sung rock power balladz as opposed to nursery rhymes and lullabyes. Every Rose Has Its Thorn and a bunch of Skid Row songs are the most popular so far (though Alice Cooper's Poison was appreciated also). Oddly he also seems to like the Christmas carol 'Good King Wenceslas'.

Grandparents awesome, medicine a mixed bag

My folks came to visit a couple of days ago, and it was fantastic to see them. There are many reasons why, but as my time is limited I will mention only a few:

- they went shopping at the supermarket and brought over lots of yummy food
- they are as excited about Dominic as we are, and share our opinion of his cuteness
- they showed us photos of our nephews
- they went out shopping for all manner of useful items and presents for us
- they went on walks with us (with Dominic in the stroller)
- they mowed our lawn and did some gardening!

Next week it's the return of the parents, plus brother! We are really looking forward to it.

On the not so great side, Dominic has been on anti-biotics for a rash on his thigh/neck. The rash is all gone now (yay!), and he only has 2 doses of medicine left (yay!), which is very good as it's a stressful process to get a little baby to swallow 4ml of yukky tasting medicine every 8 hours. It's also no fun having to wake him (and ourselves) up to give him his medicine - especially in the morning :-)

Lastly, here's a photo from today of Dominic with a cool present he got yesterday:

Cute photo

Not much sleep lately. Went for nice 40min walk with Dominic today in the morning. It is sunny.

Harry Potter'd

Debbie and I watched the DVDs of HP 4 and 5 last week - 5 broken between pre and post Dominic watching, I think. I enjoyed both of them, and would say that as a series of movies they are getting better. Debbie's midwife asked whether we'd read any of the books, and I confessed that I had not. More than that, I had made a conscious decision not to. I couldn't really explain why at the time. She suggested it might have been because they were 'too cool', which is a possibility. Certainly the wave of merchandise that accompanied the first film did place the series in the 'very commercial and popular' category. But then, I enjoyed the Pirates of the Carribean movies, so commercialism alone wouldn't put me off. I think, on reflection, it was the length and unfinished (at the time) nature of the series that put me off. I like books that are between 150 and 300 pages. I think my 'sweet spot' for books is around the 200 page mark. Kurt Vonnegut, John Brunner, William Burroughs, some of my favourite authors write shorter novels. Of course I also enjoy longer books - though I read few series of books these days. I used to read Dragonlance novels, and have read Lord of the Rings a few times, but I tend to avoid long series of books. I think the opportunity cost is a factor - if I'm going to read 7 books, I could read quite a variety of interesting authors and different set-ups, or I could read Harry Potter for 7 books. The HP may be excellent, but it currently struggles to win over the other books on the 'to read' pile.

Sunbathing

Dominic has been sunbathing each day to help reduce his low-level jaundice. It's pretty cute. There is a large inherent risk involved with naked sunbathing - he's done a little of that, but has urinated on his father in the process :-)

It's amazing the things you don't really care about when you're a parent.

True stories about Dominic

We were in hospital on day 3 of Dom's life (today is day 8). We took this photo:



Unfortunately, he's still very young, so if you ask him about it he may not tell you the story. From my point of view, it really did look like the dinosaur started it. But then, I'm definitely biased, so not the most reliable witness...

Dominic gains 100g in 2 days

Parents thrilled. He's back up to 3,725 grams. His birth weight was 3,900 I think, so he's still smaller than when he was born, but that's quite normal (up to 10% wieght loss in the first week is within the normal band, I think our midwife said). He is still very cute.

Blogging with Dom

Being home is great. We got home late on Wednesday(about 8pm?). We aren't sleeping a lot as the little man is a voracious feeder, but it is nice to be in our own peaceful home with our family. We managed a family trip to the supermarket yesterday, which was cool. Anyways, typing whilst holding Dom is hard, so I will sign off there.

Parenthood is Awesome

Labour wasn't so much fun (though it went well and only took 6 hours), but having a kid is fantastic. Dominic was born at 6.10am on Sunday, 9th December. He's a very cute wee chap, and is doing pretty well. We're hoping to be discharged from hospital tomorrow - they want to check out his breathing (a little fast) and the common heart *valve?* thingee that lots of babies have (the one where it closes either just before or just after birth). He's had some x-rays, and seems pretty healthy, but they're being thorough, which is good.



We think he's adorable, which is handy since we have to look after him for years to come :-)

No news

Debbie and I are still waiting for a new arrival. Somewhat impatiently, I hasten to add. It's unlikely that I'll be doing any live blogging from a delivery suite, so I shall send a few txt messages instead (when the big day finally comes - some time before Christmas). People should then feel free to pass on the news to all and sundry :-) Also, it's hot. And nearly the end of the school year. 4 more days with students (unless I'm able to take the generous 1 paid day of leave that's in my contract to attend the birth of a partner's child). Ah, 'tis nearly holidays time... I'm also glad I got a new cellphone. I got one with a camera (the cheapest one with a camera in the store), and it's snazzy and wee. And it lets Debbie ring me at school with important questions about midwife appointments, and txt me and so on. It's really quite neat to have caught up with 2000's latest technology :-) (they had camera-phones in Japan when we went over there in 2001, and they weren't super-brand-new. In fact, by the time we left in 2002 they were giving camera-phones away free if you signed up to a 12 month plan.