Bath Time

Thinking he's cool

Checking themselves out in the mirror

Bogan

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Ben-isms

Both little boys are talkers.  They can talk the leg off a chair.  They mainly talk to each other.  Little snippets from today.

Whilst playing on the trampoline:
Ben: I would like a shovel thanks.
He reached into the top of his shorts pretending to get some money.
Ben: I just bought a shovel mum
Then he reached out, shook Ryan's hand and said "Good doing business with you".

He wanted a drink of milk, and wanted to pour it himself.  He did a good job.
Ben:  Thank you Mummy.  Thank you Ben.  That's ok.
Yes that is right.. he thanked himself (and replied)

Ben the Magnificent

This is a little ode to our boy Ben.  

The new balance bike for a young boy's 2nd birthday.

I wanted to do it in collage, but after attempting it via three different programs/website and failing. You will have to put up with a long list of photos. 

Over the past week we have done quite a few things.  Sunday was Toby's birthday party at a play centre, I've chosen  some photos of Ben to highlight the day.  Didn't get permission from the other parents so am not using other kids.

"We" gave up the dummy this week.  What an amazing feeling (as a parent) to finally be rid of the blasted thing.  There were a troublesome few nights, but its currently day 4 and although a little late, he went to bed without an issue tonight.  Last night he screamed from 7.30 - 11pm, of course it was not the whole time, but it felt like it and it actually isn't' far from the truth.  He has stopped asking for it too.

We also "gave up" lidded cups, all drinks are now from an open cup and in the kitchen to avoid spills.  Ben is a dreadful spiller.  So its quite stressful not to have him with a lidded cup.

Ben also moved up rooms at crèche.  He is now a toddler, not a baby.  I love love love his new teachers, they are awesomely informative and seem to really like him.  Ryan will be moving up to the next room in the next two weeks as well.  He will be with his favourite teacher, Rachel. 

Very high up at the playcentre.

Toby's 4th Birthday Cake

My two and I think Patrick waiting for cake.

I'm a big kid at the bottom of a big slide

Driving

This was a huge slide and obviously was going very fast.

Still a little short for this bike, so his favourite thing to do is drop it and ask for help to lift it up again.  Four little tiptoe steps and then drop "uhoh, Daddy help"

Proud as punch

Notice the tiptoe?

Looking at a lovely pasting done at creche today.  Notice the egg developing?

Happy despite the bruise.  Contemplated taking him to the doc, but knew they'd do nothing, but my goodness it was big.  Jamie & Mark were in the garage. Ryan and I were out the front at the car.  Ben alone in the house for 2 minutes and that bruise is the result.  I asked him where he fell and he pointed to his head. So no idea how it happened.  Quality parents we are.

11.30pm

Best picture of Jamie - ever.

 Insomnia, RLS and backpain.



These things suck.

I'm currently in a funk with insomnia, can't fall asleep without drugs, its quite bad. 2-3hrs of dozing if I go drug free and only about 5 if I take a sleeping pill.  So wish it was more, my body wants more but "the insomnia" won't allow it.

RLS comes and goes.  The Sofril (the drug I'm on) is doing a pretty good job.  But I've already taken it and I can feel my legs resisting as I sit or stand.  Grrr.

Backpain.  This one disturbs me.  Its my lower back.  It was sore before we left for holidays and as one of the boys wanted to be carried, it just got worse and worse.  Now its aching all the time.  Positions it hurts to be in... lying down, sitting on a chair, sitting on the floor and kneeling.  It is really only comfortable to be standing.  So night time is doubly bad, insomnia and pain when lying down.  The straight backed wooden chairs are painful, the floppy couches are painful.  So worried I have what mum has.  I'm over being in pain.  My other problem is getting to a physio.  I just can't.  This week I'm working from 9-6 M,T,W,F and have Thursday off... go then you say, its Anzac Day, a public holiday and no private physio works on a public holiday.

Cooking today, wanted to get so much more done, but made fried rice for lunch, chicken drumsticks and mash for dinner.  Granola for my breakfast and a vegie curry type thing for my lunches.  I really wanted to make some cake, but didn't get around to it.

Have to fit in cake making this week as its my sister and her husband's birthdays this week.  They will come over for a little bit on ANZAC day for cake.  Hmmm what to make?

Some good news, Ryan is back to being fully continent.  I still have him in a pullup at night, but its unnecessary.  The flooding from a month ago still has me nervous.  That being said, he had a big drink before bed tonight and its almost midnight and he woke up, went to the loo, had a little cuddle and then said "I want to go back to bed"

Tonight I went in to check that the fellas were covered.  Ryan has his little toes poking out of his dinosaur blanket (he gets too sweaty under the doona, so he has his polar fleece blanket).  Ben's little arm was hanging out between the bars of the cot.  He did so well today.  We took his dummy off him about half an hour after he woke up and didn't get it back until he was in bed this evening.  He didn't ask for it ether, but was very happy to see it.  He went very badly backwards when we were in Thailand, he had it almost constantly and would cry "dummy" when he didn't' have it.  There are a lot of photos with that damned dummy.  Looking for a motorbike soft toy for the "Dummy Fairy" to bring and then we can lose the retched thing.

The anti-climactic birthday party

Ben fell asleep.  He refused his afternoon nap, had two swims, a long walk (well long carry), a walk along the beach, lots of bed jumping, walks up three flights of stairs to visit the roof.

Frangipani on the rooftop

A nice wooden swing chair within the hotel

The view of the pool from the top floor

Walked to the left at 5pm tonight, went to a market type place, I think it was actually a bazaar... it was fantastic.  Not very pushy.  Did my first haggle, supposedly I paid too much (according to Jamie), but I got a bikini for 600 baht.  Must do myself a spreadsheet of what the conversion is, as I have NO CLUE at this stage.  Love my new swimmers.  There are so many ladies here SO much fatter that me in very tiny bikinis that I felt kind of weird in my current bathers are they are quite covered, and everyone else has it all *out there* what am I hiding.

The restaurant we had dinner at tonight - The Ging

Smiling for the camera.

Then we went to Old Phuket Road, which is really just a classier (I guess) shopping strip.  Went to a restaurant which served so many dishes it was crazy.  Jamie had sweet n sour beef, Mark had a fried rice with seafood and egg, I had pad thai and Ryan had a satay chicken.  As mentioned before, Ben had nothing as he was asleep.  Tomorrow we'll find him a cake and will probably get him a blow up pool toy for his birthday.

Poor Benny... he missed it

 Tomorrow, I must steal the camera so we can prove that Jamie was on this holiday as well.

Thailand Trip - Day Two (Ben's Birthday)

Me at Karon Beach

Along a very busy street - very very hot

The boys put themselves in that pose at the lobby of our hotel

Karon Beach - just across the road from our hotel

This is mine and Jamie's room - its a king size, I didn't even know he was there!

Birthday Boy Ben at the beach

Its confirmed.

My youngest son is completely nuts.

He's the busiest person in the family.

Appointments

I finally took Ben to the Maternal & Child Health Nurse today for his one year old check up (he is 16 months old).  This was the biggest waste of time I have almost ever experienced.

Firstly she didn't introduce herself or have a name tag on.  She coughed most of the time, fair enough you have a cold, but go get a drink of water to pretend you are doing something about it.  Was much more interested in her computer, sending an email to transfer us to her centre.

She got me to fill in a piece of paper about stuff I'm worried about.  Wasn't very interesting, but covered the basics.  Then we (I mean Ben) did a strip, had his fontanelle checked, checked his little balls were in the right place then a weigh and measure.

Although he is not yet 10kg, I am not to be concerned about his lack of height or weight, he is a small version of normal.

I said I thought he was bowlegged, but that is normal for developing walkers, after a bit his legs will go more knock-kneed, then straighten out to normal shape.

Ryan was reading a book, and was identifying all of the pictures in the book.  She said that was really good.

So I felt rushed, and pushed out.  Not at all what I was expecting from my local (Victorian) MCHN.

I like hosting shin-digs

Today we had our dearest little chap's first birthday party.

Just so hard to actually believe little Ben is one year old.  In some ways it seems so much longer.  This last year has been very, very intense.

Today was a "Milk and Cookies" themed party, which in all honesty didn't really take off.

When we lived here 9 years ago we used our back door almost exclusively as "the door" but this time around because of now having two dogs and two little people, its easier not to have to tackle the back gate and just use the front door.  Connie still uses the back, but she is the only one.  The sliding door is hard to unlock as well.  What does this have to do with the party you ask?? Well I set up the "dessert table" to face the back door, it was quite visually exciting, I had bunting, a balloon centrepiece, a cupcake stand and other deliciousnesses. It looked great when approached from the back door.  But everyone came in through the front!  SO when you turn around the corner it was nice, but not the WOW factor I was after.

We had sausages in bread, hamburgers and coleslaw for the main course.
A pretty spectacular cake (if I do say so myself) done in the shape of a 1.
Heaps of cookies, cake pops, m&m's and jaffas.
Sugar overload, let me tell you.

Presents were great too...

Nan & Pop = clothes
Margie & Frankie-Pop = coat
Dunn family = Tonka truck
Geary family = Moon car (to go with the rocket we already have)
Holloway family = Trike with a trailer
Pulcifer family = clothes.
We got him a tractor that makes an awful amount of noise.

Introducing....

BEN ARTHUR STORER.

Born on the 3rd of April 2011 at 9.22am
Weighing in at 7lb 10oz,
51cm long (or is that tall)

Just to let you know, its Ben, not Benjamin. Arthur is my maternal grandfathers name, a man I never met, but one I have been told was very gentlemanly, a trait one would wish on your youngest son.

First meeting with big brother Mark

First meeting with big brother Ryan (and Mum & Dad)

Instant love was in the room. Ryan is quite gentle with him, wants to kiss and pat him all the time. Mark is a little more standoffish at the moment, "he's too light", but as Ben becomes bigger and stronger, I'm sure the wrestling will begin.

Ben's Birth Story

This is the information post.

Whilst its all fresh in my memory, here is Ben Arthur Storer's birth story.

As mentioned in previous posts, I'd been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for the previous two weeks, quite painful at night. Saturday (2nd April) morning I was having my shower and "lost my mucus plug" this is quite gross, THICK, sticky mucus.

So I was feeling that the birth was imminent. So stayed pretty mellow, except for going to the Becks for lunch and then down to the park for umpire training... maybe not so mellow after all. Just hung out and chatted with Margie, possibly watched telly at night (can't remember). Anyway overnight felt odd.... nothing was happening still some practice contractions but very uninteresting.

5am - I had a contraction, it was quite painful, but manageable. I went back to bed with Jamie and tried to cuddle him, I squeezed his hand through the next two contractions, I told him I thought my labour had started, he snored at me!

Went to the lounge room and called the hospital, telling them I thought my labour had started, having quite painful contractions about 5ish minutes apart lasting around a minute in length. The midwife said to come in, not to rush, have some breakfast.

Got Jamie up, he turned the coffee machine on, and grumbled at me that my timing was shitty. Sunday was the first round of the footy season, Jamie is the coach of the U10s and was umpiring the U14 match. I was freaking out, and really wanted to leave to go to the hospital. Margie got Ryan up, I couldn't hold him, gave him a kiss goodbye and kissed Mark. I got cross and told Jamie not to make a bloody coffee and lets get going.

Arrived at the hospital quite stressed and in a lot of pain. Made my way up to the delivery suite just before 7am (all the change over of staff were arriving at the same time) were led towards our room and I got diarrhoea (quite normal) and was extremely tense. By extremely tense I mean, completely tense, the midwife said it looked like I was in a full body cast and to relax my shoulders.

The new daytime midwife arrived about 7:30am and came with the night girl and a shot of morphine! She wanted to check how dilated I was before calling the anaesthetist (for my promised epidural). I was 3cm and therefore was a good time for an epidural. She then gave me the gas to breathe in. The contractions were not at all nice, they are fast and frequent. Where was the damned anaesthetist???

Jamie kept giving me looks of "you're not getting the epidural".

Fairly soon after the midwife checked my dilation, she got a doctor. She later said she "felt something" that could be a cyst on my cervix, or it could be the umbilical cord, she didn't want to freak me out, so didn't tell me until the doc had arrived. Doc checked, it wasn't the cord. If it was the cord, emergency C-section like straight away. But no, I continued on my painful journey. Each time the door of my room opened and it was a midwife (a person dressed in purple) I started to cry, not my epidural.

Finally the anaesthetist arrived - about 9am. Despite my HEAPS clinic appointment which went through all the pros and cons, this doc insisted on telling me, and it was to give Maggie the midwife time to check my dilation factor. As she popped her fingers in, my waters broke and she announced I was about 9cm dilated and it looked like the baby was crowning. Anaesthetist wished me luck and left the room.

I wailed for a bit about "this is not what I had planned".

Anyway, I somehow flipped myself onto my side, lifted my right leg into the air and pushed, out popped his little head! Shocked the bejesus out of me. Surely its harder to birth a head than that? I announced to Jamie "We're having a baby" gee I'm smart. Maggie asked if I wanted to feel his head, so I did, smooth and warm. Then I pushed out the rest of him and onto my chest he was placed. He stayed there for about two hours, just cuddling and kissing. He had a little feed about half an hour after he was born and then went to sleep - they called it a hibernation sleep.

Ben Arthur was very very red, not much vernix and nice and toasty warm. It was delightful lying there with him.

Eventually pushed out the placenta and then was stitched up again.

From whoa to go the whole thing took 4 hours. In hindsight it was great. I'm able to lift Ryan, able to drive, no big scars.... quite proud of myself actually :)