The Dower Family

Deck the halls with bells of holly… There had been a lot of build up to our first Christmas as a family unit and thankfully, it lived up to and surpassed our expectations. We are lucky to have four facets to our immediate family which means Christmas is always a hectic time and inevitably there are always a few people we can’t see over the break but look forward to catching up with soon (Pa Chris & Kaye, Nanna Freddy & Poppy Mick). But as wonderful as it was catching up with everyone, our favourite part of Christmas was early in the morning with just the three of us.  Of course it was probably earlier than we might have liked, but it was an absolute joy to sit down with Ollie and let him rip into his pressies – as well as ours.  In our almost one decade together, Nick and I had never had so many presents under our tree.  Last year we didn’t even manage to put any decorations on the tree (I’d like to think it was because I was too pregnant to care) but...

  With Nick finishing work for the year we thought it would be great to get away to the coast for a few nights to ease into the holidays before Christmas hit. It was also the perfect opportunity for me to experience one of my Christmas presents from Nick – zorbing.  For anyone who hasn’t heard of this, it basically involves diving headfirst into an inflatable bubble that is filled with 40L of water and hurtling down a hill.  Before you wonder what I did to Nick to warrant this punishment, it is actually something I have wanted to do for ages and the experience was as good as I expected, so good I’m glad I got to do it twice.  Once zorbing was done we had quite an appetite so ducked into a nearby McDonalds.  Not our finest culinary experience but we were on holidays and it was easy.  Ollie hadn’t been before and was pretty taken with all the action in the playground area.  He also got to experience chicken nuggets.  I actually h...

I love my street. When I Nick and I moved out here we happened to luck upon a great little pocket of suburbia.  We discovered that we knew the guy who lived two doors down from us who is a lawyer and does the same kind of work as us.  Across the road are two police officers who are also in the sameish area.  Both of these couples happened to have babies within weeks of Ollie being born so I’ve got this built in posse in the hood.  I hook up with these mums each week or so, along with other mums in the street/suburb.  But along with these organised occasions we have the lovely spontaneous chats in the street which might evolve into dropping in for a coffee etc.  It is so nice to have people so proximate that I can just chitty chat to on those (far too frequent) occasions when I am suffering from a serious case of cabin fever and just need to talk to someone, anyone. This afternoon was our neighbourhood Christmas party – for just a small pocket of ou...

  One of the many lovely books we have is "Where is the green sheep?” by Mem Fox (thanks Audrey). We’ve been reading it for a while but suddenly it has clicked for Ollie bear and he is just addicted to it.  He can’t get enough of it and I am finding myself reading it to him like a thousand times a day . His absolute favourite page is “here is the near sheep” with the drawing of the sheep really close – well this brings about fits of his beavis and butthead laughter followed by lots of kisses from Ollie to the sheep on the page.  It is absolutely priceless. This lovely tenderness is becoming evident in more of our everyday activities.  This afternoon as we did our usual afternoon activity of hanging out on the daybed watching life go by (“car” & “bus”), Ollie rested his little head on my chest a number of times and just chilled there for a while.  I’m a huge fan of this.  He is such a placid baby but even so, it is nice to get the...

In Nick and my old woolstore apartment there were no clotheslines.  As a result we had to buy a wooden clothes drying rack to put all our washing on.  It wasn’t huge and when drying things like sheets and towels it was a bit futile.  But after using it for the best part of five years in the apartment we moved to suburbia with a big hills hoist in the backyard and a bunch of lines under the house.  Despite this we have still dried the majority of our washing on the rack for the past two years.  But alas no more - it was getting pretty faded and one of the dowels had cracked, now finally the crossbar packed it in.  So as the title states, it is the end of an airer. I wonder whether this will now encourage us to use the proper washline or whether I will just replace it?  It is a good thing that I use disposable nappies otherwise it would have been a bit of a challenge hanging on the little airer all those cloth nappies like I remember we had hanging ...

Ollie and I headed up to the local shopping centre the other day to escape the oppressive heat (which we did) and to try and finish off our Christmas shopping (which we didn't). During our trip an old lady asked how old Ollie was which caused me to realise that it was his 11 month birthday. Later, Ollie was having a play with the toys in the nursing room while a new mum was feeding her tiny baby. I couldn't believe that suddenly I was the relaxed (albeit mildly exhausted) mother to the small boy while she was looking incredibly terrified with this teeny squealing wrinkled being. It was just a matter of moments ago that I was in her shoes. Given it is only a few weeks shy of the big 12 months (the French champagne is on ice), it totally freaks me out how quickly time has flown by. It has been the most amazing year of my life. Ollie and I have had an absolute blast being a lady of leisure and her son. We've been to mother's group, swimming lessons, coffee with friends, Gy...

I seriously took 2GB of pics in the last two days so here are a few more of my favourites. Enjoy.

Christmas came early this week. Ollie and I hit the shops two days in a row in an effort to get some present shopping done - on Friday with Nanna Carmel and the following day with Nanna Freddy. Despite trekking around the shops on both days I am no closer to finishing my shopping but Ollie had a great time with his Nannas and is already very spoiled. Saturday was Ollie's first visit to Santa. It is one hour of my life and $42.50 (seriously!) that I won't be getting back, but it was truly worth the experience. It didn't help that Nick and I might have had just a few too many vinos the night before and the constant sound of the Santa express train along with the toy whistles that were handed out to visitors to Santa (I mean really, who gives kids toys like that??) was just a little too much to bear. But unlike his parents, Ollie was on his best behaviour and sat quite happily with Santa. He didn't exactly grin from ear to ear (see attached pic) but I think I would prefer ...