The Dower Family

Friends of ours have two kids who are a few years older than Obear so we’ve been to a few birthday parties at their place over the years.  Twice a year we get to catch up with their various friends and have seen many of them pregnant, with babies and now with bigger kids.  It is amazing to see them all grow up.  This time last year we rocked out there with our tiny three week old baby who Nick held protectively throughout the party.  This year he was walking around by himself and even managed a small level of involvement in pass the parcel.  By the next party in November he will no doubt be tearing around and in years to come he can really get into the festivities with the bigger kids and hopefully look out for his younger sibling. It was while we were at the party today that I noticed something new in Ollie’s mouth – two top teeth!  Finally the two front teeth are starting to cut through.  I must concede that I was starting to wonder if he was destined to go through life with onl

That’s right, he is walking!!!!  On Sunday, Nick and I encouraged the little unit to walk between us and amazingly, it worked.  Even more amazingly we were filming it at the time so captured on film the first time he took five steps (unfortunately I cannot upload it at the moment – sorry.  am trying to rectify). Since then his little tottering around has exceeded eight steps now.  He gets SO excited with himself and is often found standing up clapping himself just before he launches off on a frolic. The birthday celebrations around here continue.  We went out on Monday night with a bunch of friends to commemorate my anniversary while Ollie slept soundly at Nanna Carmel’s.  Nick didn’t get too much sleep though as we stumbled in around 2am and Ollie decided to start the day at 5am!!  But Ollie’s birthday still rates a mention with the arrival of a beautiful gift from our friend Cyndee.  While visiting her family home recently, Ollie had a great time playing with an amazing wood

As a mum you can’t help but think your child is the smartest, most talented and beautiful being to ever walk the planet but this week provided me with one of those wonderful moments when I just felt so proud of OllieB.  We were doing the grocery shopping when Ollie started making his new dog barking noise.  I realised that we were in the pet food aisle and he was pointing at the packets of dog food.  What a smart boy.  But then when we got to the next aisle he started to make the sound again.  Alas, we were standing next to toilet paper so I figured that it must have been a total fluke and my plans of him giving Doogie Howser a run for his money crumbled.  Until … I noticed that he was pointing to the Kleenex packs with the labrador puppy on the front.  What a smart boy!!! As he starts to turn into a little boy he is becoming more independent with things like feeding himself.  The process reminds me of one of those skill tester machines where the claw tries (but invariably fail

Saturday marked the big birthday celebration for O-bear and celebrate we certainly did. The gifts had been steadily arriving in the post from the far flung relatives all week so Ollie was pretty adept at opening pressies on the big day.  Here is a pic of him opening up some lovely presents bright and early. We had a party in the park with a bunch of friends and family (including Pa Chris and Nanna Kaye who were staying with us and were a MASSIVE help making sandwiches and lugging stuff to the park in their teeny weeny little hire car).  Nick and I couldn’t get over just how many small people we actually know.  I had it in my head that it would just be our usual posse of friends with one or two littlies dotted around for good measure.  But the tally was 16 small people.  Craziness.  All hyped up on fairy bread and soft drink. The cake was an Olliebear of course.  But in this picture the icing has already taken a beating and the candle is strangely back to front.  But it was edi

It will 12 months tomorrow since you came into our lives and turned everything we knew completely upside down.  And it has been the absolute best 12 months of my life.  I thought I’d take this opportunity, before the cake and balloons and crazy ripping open of presents, to share with you some of my favourite things about you from the last year: I love the way your gorgeous milky breath smelt when you were a tiny baby.  I’d lean in and inhale it far too many times a day. I love the way you gently slap my face when I am nursing you, just to make sure I am still there. I love the way you used to sleep on your back with your arms outstretched and we would call you “Ollie the Redeemer”. I love that you are such a good sleeper and I thank you for all the dreamy afternoon naps we shared in our big bed. I love that you have a good sense of humour and crack up laughing at just the right places. I love your little gurgly race caller noise - “dagadagdurduruddaga”. I love that y

Happy New Year! The new year is always filled with exciting promise of what lays ahead.  Unfortunately this year it was also meant my return to work after over twelve months off.  I’ve been dreading this day for a very long time but also working toward it, dropping Ollie’s feeds, going in for short visits etc. so that he would be in the best position to hit the ground running. Nick has been really wonderful and has taken these first three days off work to allow Ollie to do half days and also to enable me to get back into the work groove without us fighting for the mirror or iron in the mornings.  Surprisingly it wasn’t as hard as I anticipated.  I suspect this is largely because Nick was the one to drop Ollie off while I just had to deal with getting myself back to work.  I don’t think the experience was exactly a walk in the park for Nick but thankfully when he went to pick him up later in the day, Ollie was having such a good time that he didn’t even notice Nick had returned