The Dower Family

Miss Evie is officially one month old. Thank goodness. As you can see she is getting chubbier everyday and looks less like an incredibly fragile newborn. I'm not that into teeny tiny newborns, they are too scary small. I like a few chubby rolls on the legs. The first month has flown by in so many ways, but it does also feel like we have had her around us forever. Or at least that is how it feels when you are getting up every night!! But that continues to be wonderful - if I feed her around 10pm she still wakes around 2amish and then only wants a feed around daybreak, when I am sneaky enough to bring her back to bed with me. Completely civilised. Big snaps for Evie for being such a big superstar and sleeping so well from such an early age. It means I don't have to have a nanna nap everyday just to survive the day, which means that I am able to actually achieve things around the house. One of the things I have achieved around the house lately is a hell of a lot of co...

A lot can happen in one week. This time last week we had a super cruisy easy baby who slept beautifully and had no dramas. This week we have the same again but in between it has been a whole other story. Basically Evie has reflux. In adult speak this is like heartburn, which as I know personally is not a whole lot of fun. It really reared it's head on Wednesday night (although there were a few signs over the previous day or two) which was Nick's birthday. Happy birthday to Nick - obviously his birthday took a bit of a back seat this year and we haven't even had cake yet but we'll make up for it in years to come. Anyway, I went to put Evie to sleep in her cot that night around 9.30pm but she wouldn't settle. And she kept crying. And crying. She actually cried all night long which is possibly normal for some babies but definitely not this one. At some point we made a decision that one of us needed to get some sleep so we could function with Ollie the next...

Long time no blog. But I've got a great excuse for my tardiness. Meet our newest addition, Eve Alice Dower. She was born on Friday 29 July at 7.44am. She weighed in at a hefty 3.710 grams, which is pretty impressive given Ollie was 3.715 grams, making them both 8lb 3 oz. She did manage to pip her brother in the height stakes though being just a few centimetres taller than he was. She is an absolutely wonderful little baby, especially on the first night. We were expecting to have a shocker because that was what we had on Ollie's first night but the little trooper slept for seven hours straight which was incredibly unnerving but extremely welcomed. Unfortunately she hasn't replicated this feat since then but she is still an absolute champion who feeds well, sleeps well and generally doesn't cry very much at all. Except perhaps in this photo, but this was her first bath. The photo at the top is Ollie meeting his little sister for the first time at the hospit...

In the last week around here there has been launched by me a "war on defiance". But, like the "war on terror" and "war on drugs" it seems that while there may be minor victories scored occasionally, there is never really going to be any true winner. I think the reason I've been so caught up in trying to stamp out any dodgy behaviour is that I've been working toward this point for nine months now and was hoping that the arrival of the new baby would see us with a two and a half year old boy who went to sleep without any fuss, stayed in his bed all night without calling out to me (pat me mummy, read me a story without pictures mummy, there's a monster mummy) and recognised the importance of a day nap. And despite there being times over the past nine months when Ollie has been capable of all of these things, it seems that now is just not that time. There have been plenty of tears on both of our parts over the past week or so but I have now rea...

The title of this week's blog offers a number of excuses for not bothering to put a blog out last week. And given that I am having a baby next week I can't imagine anyone is going to be too critical of me. It certainly has gotten significantly tougher in the last week just to be me - especially chasing an energetic toddler around as well. Sleep is pretty sketchy at the moment for me so I'm not so secretly hoping that instead of flowers (which, lets be honest are a pretty big waste of money anyway, unless they are made out of chocolate!) people send me to the hospital baskets of things like YSL's Touche Eclat and other miracle potions which will cover the massive dark circles that have settled permanently in under my eyes! One thing I can't complain about though is how wonderful Nick has been lately. He is totally encouraging me to be the laziest housewife in the world and has taught Ollie to tell me to "take it easy mummy". Ollie has embraced this qui...

Life has been pretty busy around here in the last week. Between trying to kick off a new little business (if you haven't already done so, check it out at facebook.com/minimayhemtshirts), chasing around an increasingly opinionated little boy and trying to cram as many social events as we can into our last few weeks as a known quantity - you could definitely say it has been hectic. One of the many activities I have had on was a lovely baby shower thrown for me by my lovely Sam & Rachel. It was a nice chance to catch up with a few friends without having to worry about chasing small children around and actually having some adult conversation. I was quite spoilt with lovely gifts too which was very kind - most of them for the baby (I had no idea they made such cute and tiny little girly shoes) but a few decadent ones for me too. Ollie didn't miss out on all the fun though, having Audrey and Henry around for a playdate with the daddies looking after them. The house was surpr...

It fills my heart with such joy that Ollie loves books more than pretty much everything else. This has been made pretty clear to me this week when: - he refused to leave daycare because he hadn't finished 'reading' a book - we caught him reading books in bed when he was meant to be going to have a nap - he took great delight in following along at just the right pages to a Toy Story book on CD that Aunty Hayley and Uncle Simon gave him - he continued to try to negotiate for an extra book each night at bedtime. O continues to exert his two year old influence around the place. This week has seen a little bit of tantrum throwing. I really thought we were immune to this since every other two year old we know has been doing it for quite some time. But alas, I was wrong. Perhaps O is just a late bloomer in the tantrum stakes? The finest example of this was when I went along to a morning tea at daycare on a non-Ollie daycare day. Which meant that when the morning tea was over...

It has been a crazy busy week around here. The weekend kicked off a day early with Nick taking Friday off so we could head back to Seaworld again before our return passes ran out. I was contemplating doing this on my own but am SO thankful that I had Nick there to help out. Turns out trekking around theme parks with a toddler while eight months pregnant isn't the easiest thing to do. Even if for no other reason than they don't let pregnant people go on the kiddy rides. Who knew? I mean the adult rollercoaster I can understand but the merry go round? Perhaps they were worried I might be too heavy?? As well as the kiddy rides we checked out the dolphin show (or the whale show to Ollie, he keeps getting dolphins and whales confused), the sharks and of course our favourites, the penguins. Saturday morning saw us wander down to the local farmer's markets to pick up some goodies. Not of the fresh produce variety but of the seriously delicious sweeties kind. We have disc...

It has been absolutely freezing here this week, well by usual standards at least. Our house is definitely a lot warmer than the old house which, being a post-war house, had gaping holes between the floorboards to let the freezing air in. Nick has found it so cold in fact that he needed to pick up some gloves and a beanie to see him through his mornings catching the train into work. Of course Ollie thought that they looked better on him, perhaps they did, but only because he was also wearing his super gorgeous little ugg boots as well. I have also managed to get through my first full week as a stay at home mummy. It hasn't been too tough let me tell you. It is actually only one extra day with Ollie at the moment as he is still in daycare for two days a week and will stay there until the baby is at least three months. So I find myself with a nice little mid-week weekend to myself each week. It is pretty surreal given how little time I have had to myself in the past two and a h...

So you might have noticed that there was no blog last week. There are two competing theories as to why that was. The first is that it seems someone temporarily replaced Ollie with one of Satan's offspring. And perhaps I figured that if you can't say something nice about someone then perhaps you shouldn't blog that week at all. I guess we have been pretty sheltered from the terrible twos and this latest assault on boundaries really hasn't been that bad. It has meant getting him to sleep for his nap and at nighttime (and getting him to stay asleep) has been a bit trying. But I was explaining it to someone at work who has kids, and I told him that it had taken an hour to get Ollie to go down to sleep and then he had woken up again around 3am. This person pointed out to me that it sounded like nirvana to him. Perhaps we have been spoiled by such good behaviour and just don't know how good we have it? But still, it has been pretty trying at times, especially when ...