Weekend Wrap

We all had an action packed weekend. Nana came to stay and did LOTS of baby-sitting, Ingrid and I went along to the Annual Radio Awards on Saturday and Ingrid had a birthday yesterday!

Sophie did enjoy seeing her Nana this weekend and she was on her best behavior for her all weekend. We had to bolt around 4:30pm on Saturday for the awards, so Nana got to enjoy the witching hour with Sophie, but from all accounts Sophie was a little angel (why doesn't she do that for me and Ingrid in the evening!).

Ingrid got home around 11:30pm Saturday night, (The Rock had a pretty good night, awards wise so I HAD to stay longer obviously!) I eventually crawled in around 4am. We were super glad mum was still here on Sunday as Ingrid and I were feeling very under the weather on her birthday and were hardly the parent material yesterday at all. Nana got Sophie up bright and early Sunday which meant the two of us could have a long overdue lie in and after we surfaced around 10am, we opened a couple of Ingrid's presents and then the two of us went out for a nice ‘hang-over’ birthday breakfast. Nothing like greasy bacon and eggs when you're feeling like death warmed up too…

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Sophie knows what to do when her parents are hung-over!

Mum headed off around 2pm, so the three of us soldiered through the day...just. We went to get some groceries that afternoon and wished we hadn’t…I walked into pole and almost dropped Sophie, Ingrid couldn't find the keys any where and I managed to shut the car-boot right on top of my coffee that I’d been hanging out for all day, resulting in it squirting throughout the boot and all over me (I completely forgot I had rested it on the bottom part of the opened car-boot).

Sophie didn't seemed to mind her leper parents yesterday though...she gave us plenty of cuddles and kept herself occupied by chasing balls around the room and reading all day....good on ya Sophie.

Brad

Check out my sore nose!

I checked out the bloggy thingy yesterday and noticed that daddy didn't put up any photos of my sore nose....I want lots of people to see so they can all say 'oh poor little Sophie' and give me lots of cuddles when they see me...I like cuddles....

My Nana is coming up to see me this weekend - Yay! and I overheard mummy and daddy talking about 'ditching me' tomorrow with Nana while they go out and 'party hard'....it's daddy's radio awards thing-a-ma-jig tomorrow night.

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Looks really sore aye?...that's caus it is silly.

It's mummy's birthday on Sunday and I don't think she is very happy about it...caus everytime daddy mentions it he always says that she's going to be THREE years older than him, then mummy starts to get very angry at him...and I laugh...lots.

Anyway, my attention span is gone now, can't be bothered with this anymore...I'm gonna climb up the stairs again when no-one is looking! See ya!

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More shots of my sore nose...come on, 1...2...3 "oh poor Sophie"

Sophiexx

Back to Day Care today

Apart from nearly disfiguring herself today, the staff at Day Care said Sophie had her best day so far. She had two pretty decent sleeps and was chatting with everybody and running around all day long...up until she did a head-first nose dive on the lino...and is now sporting a swollen red button nose.

I'm glad I wasn’t there when she fell over, she comes close to setting off car alarms when she bangs her head a little bit, so a full blooded nose dive would have been ear-splitting.

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No photo's of the red swollen nose...a little cute shot instead

Sophie's still got a little cold, but her virus has disappeared and her ear infection seems well cleared up. We had to stop the penicillen as it was giving her a nasty rash all over her body, but she seems a lot better now.

Brad

Much better today

Sophie woke up around 2am this morning. I was extra sneaky and pretended to be in a coma- like sleep when she woke up, so Ingrid drew the short straw and spent over an hour getting her back to sleep again.

We’re doing split work shifts over the next couple of days. I went to work early this moring and came home around 2pm, then Ingrid went into work. Tomorrow I'm staying home in the morning and we're swapping over at midday. Wednesday is a Public Holiday and fingers crossed Sophie can go back to Day Care on Thursday.

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I caught Sophie playing with the TV remote today. She had turned on the 'History Channel' and was fascinated with a nasty little German guy with a dodgy mo.

The good news is Sophie is a lot better today. She's almost back to her energetic little self again, christ, I even had to tell her off this afternoon for continually climbing up the bloody stairs! and she knows what the word 'no' means too, she even went bright red in the checks at one stage and dropped her bottom lip to the floor when I told her off.

She did have lots of smiles for both of us today though and is eating more and more. The antibiotics are obviously doing their trick...it's nice having our little girl back.

Brad

Sophie still unwell

Unfortunately Sophie hasn’t improved much since Friday which has resulted in a couple of rough nights with very little sleep, for all of us.

We had planned to go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers last night, we had a babysitter booked and ready to go, but Sophie obviously wasn’t well so I stayed home and Ingrid went along with a few people from work. (I saw them play in Boston a few months back, so it didn’t really bother me not seeing them again so soon). Thankfully one of us did stay home and not the baby-sitter, as Sophie didn’t really sleep at all during the evening and needed feeding and lots of cuddles.

She's been like this most of the weekend...poor little thing

Ingrid got home around midnight, she said she couldn't really enjoy the show, knowing her little baby was so unwell back at home.

During the night Sophie wouldn’t sleep so Ingrid took her down to the spare room and rested her on her chest until she finally drifted off lying on her mummy.

We took her back to the Doctors today for another check-up. She still has a mild fever and has also developed a pretty nasty ear infection, which is why she’s not sleeping properly and prefers burying her head into one of us and sleeping that way. She’s on more drugs than the Rolling Stones have ever consumed too!

A rare shot of Sophie smiling this weekend...and check out those tired little eyes.

The Doc said we should keep her home for a couple of days so she can ride out the virus and hopefully her ear infection will get better, the poor thing has her eye teeth coming through too which has given her diarrhea and nasty old nappy rash.

It almost brings tears to your eyes when Sophie stares at us both, desperately searching for an answer as to why she’s feeling the way she does. Hope she gets better soon.

Sophie's drug stash

Brad

Sophie unwell

Sophie was fast asleep at daycare when Ingrid went to pick her up this afternoon. She rarely sleeps there during the day and bviously needed it, so Ingrid left here there and came and picked me up early from work.

When we arrived at daycare together, we could both see Sophie through one of the side windows. Sophie was sitting a little high chair having her afternoon tea. We felt a little bit like dodgy criminals spying through the window watching out cute bubs eating, and when Sophie eventually spied us, we saw her tears well up surprisingly, so we headed inside. The DayCare staff told us that she had slept for close to 2 hours (which is really unusual for Sophie) but apart from the long afternoon nap, she had been fine all day long.

Didn't want a photo of Sophie looking unwell, so I found this cute little one of her instead

We packed her up and headed back home. The quick 5 minute car-ride was awful though, Sophie cried and grizzled while rubbing her eyes with a sad look on her face all the way back. Once home, we could easily tell Sophie wasn’t herself, she wouldn’t stop crying and continued to bury her upset little head into us. Her poor checks were bright red and she became increasingling hot. We tried to give her a bit of Pamol to see if that would help, but she spat it all out and became even more upset and agitated. While I was holding on to her and trying to settle her down, her entire body suddenly went into convulsions...man, that is a pretty traumatic thing to experience, she had a good 5-6 body spasms within 60 seconds or so and then went limp and stared straight ahead…looking into space.

After taking her temperature (which was pretty high - 38.8) we gave her a bottle which she skulled super fast then rushed her off to the A&E clinic down the road. The poor thing was beside herself as the doc took her temperature again (which had increased even more by this stage) but they did manage to get some more Pamol into her between her screaming fits.

The Doc then phoned Starship Hospital to get some more advice. In the end they told us to sit tight, take her home to bed and mentioned if she has any more convulsions or fits overnight, we needed to rush her into hospital ASAP. We found out the convulsions apparently aren’t that uncommon for babies between 9-20 months, providing they are isolated ones and last less than 5 minutes. They also said Sophie had obviously picked up a ‘viral thing’ and she 'simply needs to ride it out'. Tomorrow we need to take her back for a urine test and quick check up again.

I’m happy to report that she hit the sack soon as we got home and fingers crossed she has a good nights sleep….scary shit though.

Brad

Cars suck sometimes.

I got a call from Ingrid around 3:45pm today. As soon as I picked up the phone I knew something wasn’t right…it was angry Ingrid on the phone…

She had just picked up little Sophie from Daycare, then headed out to the car to go home. Ingrid beeped the key alarm to open the car door and waited, beeped again…nothing. The fricken alarm for the car had shit itself yet AGAIN. The same bloody thing happened around 3 months ago (as you may have read in an earlier post) and if this sort of thing happens there is literally nothing you can do to get access into the car - bar smashing a window.

Sophie showing us how she felt about her horrible afternoon

A simple solution would have been for me to come home, pick up the spare car-seat and pick the two of them up and get the car sorted out later on, but no, there weren’t any vehicles around at work, so I phoned a Holden dealership and told them about the predicament. All their service people were at various jobs and couldn’t get to my girls for a good couple of hours, so I started going through the yellow pages frantically trying to find locksmiths. After failing with 4 useless companies, I finally got someone to help out; they said they would be there around 4:15pm - phew. By this stage Sophie had, had enough and desperately needed to get home to be fed and get some much needed sleep. I managed to grab a work vehicle around 4:45pm and decided to swing past Daycare fully expecting NOT to see them there…wrong. The locksmith geezer was having a complete mare with the door and spent close to an hour trying to get in…god knows how he managed to get a job there in the first place. “So can you actually work your way around a lock buddy” was obviously skipped over during his job interview.

Anyway, $125 later we arrived home with a very upset and tired little girl. She ate bugger all for dinner, shit her pants, screamed in the bath and topped it off by smacking her little face on the coffee table and crying even more.

All because of a dodgy key alarm that supposedly has been fixed.
Cars suck sometimes.

Brad

Settling in well

She's becoming more independent by the day

Sophie had a pretty good week at Day Care. Early in the week, she had her usual 2 sleeps during the day, but Thursday & Friday, decided, she only wanted to sleep in the morning. The care-givers write up a daily report of things she’s done throughout the day too so we can follow her progress - they are really happy with her progress and said she’s interacting with the other kids quite a lot now and a joy to have around.

Part of a report from day-care.

After offending a couple of god squadders this morning – (I opened the door to them wearing my very polite “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mother F*cker” t-shirt) – we decided to go out for coffee and pick up some birthday presents for Sophie’s upcoming 1st birthday. (nb. I did change my shirt by the way before going out).

We stopped at a café for lunch and tried to feed Sophie as she was getting pretty cranky...but man, it’s tough work trying to feed her now!...she is completely independent and doesn’t want anybody else trying to feed her…so after cleaning pumpkin mash off my shirt, jeans, face, shoes and other customers, we headed home.

Brad

Noddy

Check out the new video of Sophie (under Sophie's Video's New) - the one titled "noddy'
It's her new game.

Brad

My day at Sheep World

I'm getting a lot bigger now so I made mummy and daddy turn my car-seat around like a real grown-ups. It's heaps better and I can see lots of stuff now.

I found out about a place called "Sheep World" today, it's about a hour's drive north of Auckland, so after I woke up from my mid-morning sleep, we packed up the car and headed out.

Check me out now sitting the right way round in the car...finally!

Outside Sheep World. Daddy put me in front of the sign 'caus he said it was a 'great scene setter'...whatever that means?


Guess what we saw there...I couldn't believe it either...sheep!


We even saw little sheep there...funny that, especially at a place called Sheep World.

Mummy hogged all the pet food and fed the animals...she was muttering something about growing up on a farm and re-living her youth...I thought this was supposed to be all about me?

There's mummy again...hogging the farm food, feeding the animals...and not a picture of me in sight...

Arhh, that's more like it. This is what I came here to do...get up nice and close with all the farm animals...quick sheepy thing, smell my finger!

He did smell my finger!...that's pretty funny - now the other one wants a turn too!

I had a great time at Sheep world today, thanks mum and dad.

I feel asleep in the car on the way home and after we got home we all went out to the park for the afternoon. We saw a family there and they had a very excited doggy...it was really friendly and came right up to me and up licked my face. It was funny, caus since I've been going to day care, I've had a runny nose all the time...and the kind doggy licked it all off so mummy and daddy didn't have too...and there was lots of it on there too...mmmm.

See ya.

Sophiexx

Ferry time.

It was a beautiful day yesterday (Easter Friday) so we decided to go for a trip on the Ferry. We headed over to Devonport around 11am and jumped on the Auckland Ferry for a little adventure into the city centre.

Sophie had a blast standing outside on the deck trying to catch the wind in her hands while squealing with joy all the way over. (about a 20 minute trip)

After we arrived we went for a stroll down Princess Wharf and had lunch (well, Sophie ate lunch and Mummy and Daddy just had coffee) at a swanky cafe. Afterwards we went for a walk around the shops and cafe's around the Viaduct and then headed back to the Ferry terminal. The trip back across the harbour was just as cool for Sophie and naturally, she was very loud and gave everyone on deck big smiles.

Steve and Maria came over in the afternoon to see their little niece (who was having a monster afternoon sleep) - I had to wake her up around 4pm otherwise she would have been up all night!

Sophie getting excited before the big boat ride

View from the Ferry...stunning day.

Mummy and Sophie on board

Daddy and Sophie...lucky her hat was tied on properly!

Doesn't she look sweet in this shot aye?

Eating lunch at The Hilton...and yes she made lots of mess

Daddy pulling stupid faces

Mummy striking a pose on Deck

Week 1 at Day Care.

Well luckily the week at daycare for Sophie got better, so that in turn made me feel much better dropping her off there each day. After the first couple of days where Sophie most definitely didn't want to have an afternoon sleep, she finally got herself back into routine and slept there on Wednesday and Thursday - although they were only short naps, it made for a much happier child when I went to pick her up each afternoon and she managed to stay awake longer in the evening in order for her daddy to see her each night.

Monday was our two year wedding anniversary, so a very kind friend babysat for us while we went to our favourite Italian restaurant for a bite to eat and quiet wine or two. It was a lovely evening and Sophie was perfect while we were away, although I am sure it was because she was totally exhausted from her big first day at daycare.

Work for me is a little quieter than I would like, but thats just because it is early days still and they are very kindly letting me settle in slowly - good in theory but does make me sit and think of Sophie and miss her more than if I was busy, busy, busy. Still I am sure it will pick up a little more soon.

I am posting this on Easter Friday and we are trying to decide what to do with the weekend as it would seem such a waste sitting around at home and we will probably all get incredibly bored if we did, so I guess we had better look up things to do on the internet! When I picked Sophie up yesterday from daycare, they had done some paintings, so below is Sophie's very first piece of artwork - I see talent in there - maybe she will be a great artist like her great nan Florence!

Ingrid

Sophie's artwork on display on the fridge

Out to dinner on our anniversary

Day Care. Day 1

Day Care. Day 1.

As promised here's Day 1 Update.

Well day one of work! I can’t actually believe that it has been a year since I went on Maternity leave from my job and am now returning. It felt very strange walking back through the doors and feeling like I had never left the place. It was incredibly hard leaving Sophie this morning, but her caregiver called at midday to say she was doing well and had her morning sleep without too many problems, so it was great to get that feedback and feel a lot better about dropping her off. However it was a different story when I went to pick her up after work. I could here her screaming the minute I stepped out of the car! She most definitely did not want to have an afternoon sleep and of course by the time I got her home and kept her occupied until dinner time she was very, very grumpy and quite hard to keep awake – so into bed at 5.30 she went, which of course makes it difficult for Brad to see her. So fingers crossed it’s just a bit of early day teething troubles that will get better over time. Of course I now feel like a guilty mother!
Keep posted for another update of our adventure at daycare!


Ingrid

Day Care tomorrow

Sophie begins a new phase in her life tomorrow. Dare Care.

Look Sophie's so eager to get outside again, she's trying to unlock the bloody door!

The ironic thing is, we spoke quite openly at the beginning about how she wouldn’t need to go to day-care and Ingrid would more than likely not go back to work, but after almost 11 months, we’ve both agreed that it will be beneficial to Sophie to at least have a crack at it for 25 hours a week. Sophie is now at an age where she is constantly on the go all the time and adores getting out of the house and interacting with other human beings as much as possible.

Ingrid, obviously, is apprehensive and feeling bad about leaving her tomorrow, (I found it hard enough leaving Sophie to go back to work after a month, so I can only imaging how Ingrid must be feeling at the moment, basically leaving Sophie with complete strangers for a few hours a day)… Although we have met the care-givers quite a bit and they seem like genuine nice people who love what they do. I bet Ingrid will be texting and phoning them all every 30 minutes for the first couple of weeks all the same!

Ingrid went out and bought a whole lot of new clothes and things for Sophie too, she needs a new change of clothes daily, shoes, formula and a big supply of nappies, they pretty much supply everything else – they even have a qualified chef/cook that comes in daily to cook and prepare all the lunches for them…lucky little buggers.

I’m sure Sophie will love Dare Care (and just quietly, Ingrid might enjoy a bit of adult stimulation throughout the day too). We both have agreed that if Daycare doesn’t work out for whatever reasons, Ingrid at least can take her out and come home again, and after only 11 months at home, Sophie’s already developed into a beautiful, extremely bright, well natured, adorable little bubs, which is testament to what a truly wonderful job Ingrid has done so far.

Bradxx

Ps. Thanks again to Nana for coming up this weekend, it was great to see you again and Sophie loved having you here too!