The Dower Family

Ollie and I have been attending the mother's group at our local child health centre for the last three weeks. There are about nine other mums from the neighbourhood with their bubs who are all about the same age as Ollie. So far we have learnt about sleep settling techniques (a topic to which everyone paid a great deal of attention) and moving onto solid foods, but most of the time is just spent chatting about the babies and what we have experienced during the week. It is reassuring to know that everyone else is going through the same issues and interesting to hear how different people are dealing with things. Everyone is really lovely and we hope to continue to meet as a group once the classes finish. I suspect that like me, most people only really went to the class in with a view to meeting other mums. Like most of the babies, Ollie's favourite part of the class is at the end when we sing along to a DVD of nursery rhymes. Today Olliebear gave me lots of smiles during thi...

Ollie has discovered a new toy - and this one doesn't require any assembly or AA batteries as it is right at the end of his arms - his hands! It has replaced his dummy a lot of the time (not a bad thing) and is fantastic in the middle of the night. I often go into his room and see his fist wedged firmly in his mouth and loud slurping noises emanating. It keeps him occupied for a while before he remembers he wants to be fed. As you can see from the pictures, his fist isn't tiny but he manages. And it appears he found my taking photos quite amusing. Unfortunately Ollie is still suffering from a bit of a cold. We hear his tiny little sneezes and coughs coming from his nursey in the night and sometimes when he gets really snuffly I have to use an aspirator to suck his snot out. It is totally gross and neither of us enjoy it very much. But he has managed so far to avoid a fever and doesn't appear to be too put out by the experience. I've also included a few photos we t...

To commemorate the Cats first game of the season, Ollie thought it would be a good opportunity to try on some of his football paraphenalia. Honestly, he was nagging me all day to put the stuff on. Despite the jumpsuit being a size 0 (and therefore an ideal size for the last Saturday in September), by rolling up the sleeves a little it was almost a perfect fit. As you can see from the particularly pensive photo, Ollie was pondering whether Bomber Thompson will be calling him up this season to replace Josh Hunt. As I type this the Cats are playing the Hawks but as it is past Ollie's bedtime he is not watching. Mind you, he is particularly whingy tonight and Nick and I are taking turns to go in and settle him. Perhaps he can sense that he is missing out? But it is best that he not watch too much football at this early stage. Gus the cat has learnt over the years to stay away from Nick during games as he is prone to suddent outbursts of abuse and incoherent ramblings at the TV. ...

Today we went to the physio about Ollie's flat head. Luckily for us, one of the few paediatric phsyiotherapists in Brisbane just happens to be in Sherwood. She confirmed that we weren't imagining Ollie's flat spot and also that his neck muscle on one side was tighter than it should be as a result of favouring his right side. It turns out that we are already doing pretty much most of the things that we can do to help him with this problem (talking to him and putting toys to his left side to encourage him to look that way, raising his mattress on one side and LOTS of tummy time). We have an appointment to go back in two weeks so we have to do everything we can in that time so that there is a really noticeable improvement next time we see her. As an update on the sleep front, on Sunday night Ollie went down around 6.30 and didn't wake until 1am for a feed. He then slept through until morning. I thought this must have been a fluke but then last night he woke for his 1...

Over the past week we have noticed that Ollie is becoming less of a floppy newborn and more of a chubby little baby, although his head is still fairly floppy. As he is now 6+ kilos, he is starting to outgrow his baby capsule for the car and we needed to start thinking about getting him a convertible car seat. After taking on board the advice of friends with babies and a lot of googling, we decided on the Safe n Sound Meridian seat. At $500+ it is certainly not cheap but with a reputation as the safest converttible seat in Australia we couldn't say no. We settled on a nice grey colour to match the upholstery in our car, but concede that once it gets a few bananas mashed into it and is spewed on a few times, it mightn't look so fresh. It has all the bells and whistles like a canopy to protect him from the sun and a nice little pocket for Ollie to keep his crucial driving accessories, like a copy of FHM magazine (for Uncle Guy) and a hipflask of cognac. The only thing it does...

In the last week Ollie and I have had a number of exciting excursions. On Saturday I had an Ollie-free excursion of an hour and a half massage while Nick looked after our little man. It was the perfect escape for me and I thoroughly enjoyed lounging around in the private spa and sauna afterwards. But I was happy when Nick came to pick me up - even though I was greeted by the sound of his screams from within the car (Ollie's, not Nick's). On Monday we went to our first week of Mother's group at the local child health clinic. There were about 10 mums and their babies who are all about the same age as Ollie. It was great to meet some other first time mums who live nearby. Hopefully a few of us will keep in touch after the four weeks are up. Of course, Ollie was the first baby to crack up during the class. Obviously those things aren't a drama in that kind of setting but I did spend a lot of the time standing up rocking him while trying to listen. Luckily there wa...

Yesterday, Ollie and I went to visit the lovely baby nurse Kay to get him weighed for the first time since his 6 week check when he weighed 5.5 kg. In that two week period he put on just over 500 g to bring him up to 6.05 kg. While this weight gain is at the higher end of the scale, it isn't as massive as some of his previous weeks which isn't surprising - neither of us could keep that up! Kay tells me that his weight gain will probably even out in the next month or so but at this stage he is in the 80th percentile for boys of his age. And scraping over 6 kg means we can move up to the next size of nappies! One thing that Kay did point out to me was that Ollie is starting to get a flat spot on the right side of his head. It seems that he has developed a preference for laying with his neck to the right. So we have to be vigilant about which way he is sleeping and try to encourage him to look left a lot by stacking his toys in an enticing manner to his left side. On a not s...

We have finally received the photos we had taken of Ollie in early February by Rebecca Green, our wedding photographer. As you can see he is a natural in front of the camera. Actually that isn't quite true as he pretty much screamed for most of the time that Rebecca was here. The last photo with the dummy in his mouth frustrates me because it is a such a beautiful photo, but for the dummy. But if it were not for the dummy there would be no photo as he had been absolutely hysterical at that point. The photo is what it is - he still looks gorgeous! On the home front we are settling nicely into our daily life and we are trying to structure our days a little better. For the last four nights we have enforced a bedtime of 7pm. This started out meaning he actually got to sleep around 9pm (after two hours of screaming) but it is now closer to 8pm. From there he sleeps through to about 6 or 7 am with three feeds in between. We really can't complain - he is an exceptionally good b...

On Monday night, Ollie's aunty Em (just like in the wizard of Oz) came over for dinner after having been in the Middle East for the last month. She couldn't believe how much he had grown. Nick and Emma bathed Ollie and had another Skype chat with Nanna Carmel in Qatar. Ollie stacked on quite a turn after dinner and even Nanna Freda's patented "Nanna Hold" (see pic) couldn't relieve the pressure. Eventually around 10pm he went to sleep and I was able to relax with a nice glass of wine. He then slept through to 3am which was lovely. Yesterday Ollie and I took a trip into town to catch up with my workmates at CDPP. It was great to sit down at Cafe Merlo again (which I can't believe is still in business without my substantial patronage) and catch up on some work gossip. We took a very quick tour through one of the office floors to say hello to a small group of people. It was during this time that Ollie made it clear that he wasn't a fan of CDPP. Although i...