The Dower Family

The weeks really are starting to fly by. I can't believe it has been 13 weeks now that we have had this gorgeous little girl in our world. She continues to be an absolute joy and I am just so damn lucky to be her mummy. This week she achieved two milestones. The first was to roll from her tummy to her back. Arguably not that exciting though as it is significantly caused by gravity but she has worked out how to lean so that her body weight kicks in and does the rest. She did it four times in a row the first time so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fluke. The second achievement is an extension of the other week when she worked out that her hand went quite nicely into her mouth. Today she figured out how to hold an object (that I put into her hand) and of course that object then went into her mouth. Delicious. Who knows what she will learn next week. It is amazing watching them learn. Obear is also doing a great job of learning himself. Today he learned how to take his ...

Apologies for the incredibly late blog this week. I have been having some technical difficulties uploading photos. I've also been incredibly busy printing millions (well a few at least) t-shirts in preparation for our first big market on 19 November. So because I have been busy I decided that this week's blog can be brought to you by none other than the Olliebear. How you ask? Well last week Ollie discovered our point and shoot camera, which thankfully is one of those awesome ones you can throw at a rock underwater and it will still work. So O has been having a great time toting the camera around with him and taking some lovely little pics. So here we have the world through Ollie's eyes... The top photo is of his and my shadow at the beach. This is a personal fave of mine. Nice composition, even a bit of a dutch tilt going on! This one is of "rainbows" on the floor. The rainbows are the sun shining through the crystals on my candelabra. You can also see a...

Welcome to the world to our newest relative Alexander Luke Dower, who arrived a few days ahead of schedule over the weekend. The original plan was that Alex would share his birthday with his dad, but it seems that little Alex wanted a special day of his very own. We took Ollie and Evie up to the hospital to meet their new cousin and to give our best wishes to Mum Fiona and Dad Luke. We can't wait until Alex gets a bit bigger and then we shudder to think of all the shenanigans these three will get up to over the years. Evie and I had another girly outing over the weekend to my friend Phoebe's hens celebration. I have known Phoebe since 1987 so it was a real thrill to catch up again for such a lovely occasion. But since it was an afternoon affair I was able to take Evie along with me - which is a good thing and also not such a good thing. I'm itching to go to a social event without her soon but it is probably a while off. It is funny that when you have a baby with you,...

We have had so many occasions to sing the Geelong Cat's team song since Ollie was born that you would think he would know the words by heart now. And last Saturday we were lucky enough to get one more chance to sing it this season when the Cats thumped the feral Pies in the Grand Final. For anyone who doesn't follow AFL, Collingwood are the team that everyone despises (probably even the Pies fans themselves, if they have half a brain, which they probably don't). So the win was even sweeter. It was also especially sweet for Pa Chris, a lifelong diehard Cat's fan, to score three tickets to the final at the last minute from a very generous friend. Nick was extremely jealous indeed. Now the AFL Grand Final is held on a Saturday afternoon, i.e. prime kidlet time, so we had to get a little creative about how we were going to wrangle the TV to ourselves and a bit of peace and quiet. The solution? A super awesome cubby house complete with its own LCD TV, Stanley the Dog,...

I am loving the small town feel of the area we live in. I've always loved that sense of community you get in a country town, and the more I explore this area the happier I am that it has that vibe. This was particularly evident last week when the local footy team made it to the grand final. All of the businesses had signs up wishing them well, but the best show of support came from the local baker who made the coolest bread I have ever seen - with green and red swirls!! Unsurprisingly Ollie thought this was pretty awesome too and happily devoured all that was placed before him. Speaking of football, the mighty Geelong Cats played in the preliminary final last week against some other team whose name is not worth mentioning. So we busted out the Geelong onesie that Pa Chris gave to Ollie when he was a baby. Thankfully the Cats rose to the occasion and it looks like the onesie will be getting busted out again this coming weekend. Evie was clearly not impressed at being dressed l...

It has been a big week (alright week and a half!) of firsts around here. The first of the firsts is that we have official smiling!! I've endeavoured to capture it for you but Evie is still pretty stingy with the smiles. This is the best I could do. You can see a hint of a smile. She reserves the good smiles for when I poke her on the nose and she even throws a few in the direction of her lovely big brother (although clearly not in this photo). Other firsts include: - first efforts by Evie on her baby playmat. She figured out that if she kicks some things they make noises. Always very cool to watch them make a startling realisation such as this one. And then go on to repeat the same action. - first bath in the big tub. The whole baby bath thing gets a bit tedious after a while so I jumped in the big tub with her and she just loved it. Like Ollie she adores floating on top of the water with her ears submerged and all the sounds of the world muffled (I do a similar thing whe...

One week into being at home on my own and it is starting to feel more normal. I'd like to say we hadn't had a repeat of last Monday's debacle with sleep but unfortunately we did on Friday. And it isn't like I had success on the days leading up to it - Ollie had daycare on Tuesday and Wednesday and then had a fabulous day at the library and the park with Nanna Carmel and Grandpa Rob on Thursday, so he just crashed out in the car. So basically my second attempt at putting them both down to sleep was just as big as a failure as the first. I may possibly have found myself in the midst of a mummy meltdown and next thing I knew I was removing every single toy, book and other item of fun from Ollie's room and piling them up in the hallway. Maybe not my best behaviour but then again, Ollie was equally as awful, using pure strength to push his gate open at the bottom so he could get out. sigh, trying times. But we both got through it (eventually) and thanks to Nick...

Well Sunday was Nick's first father's day as a daddy to two. So of course we had to honour him with twice the love. Present wise he scored some lovely framed photos of the kidlets to take back to work with him, a Darrell Lea dad's bag (a father's day must!) and some cool cufflinks made out of scrabble tiles - the letters "O" and "E". Ollie even helped Nick out with his gifts, saving him the trouble of having to unwrap them himself! We rounded the morning out with pancakes and ice-cream at home before wandering down to the foreshore for the sunday markets. Ollie was lucky enough to have a go on the jumping castle again which is pretty high up his awesome scale right now. He starts his turn out a bit nervous, making sure we are in his sight at all times but before you know it he is tearing through it at breakneck pace to get to the slide, and even better, clambering up the slide rather than going around the long way. He has quite the monkey skill...

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...