What a cutie...

End of the week and too tired to update, so here's a couple of recent shots of Sophie Joan King

Sophie waiting patiently for her dinner

Checking out what's on telly

Daddy telling Sophie about his day at work

Birthdays and Coldplays

I had a great time in Sydney on Tuesday. I went over with a few people to see Coldplay perform at The Sydney Entertainment Centre. Never really been a huge fan, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised…I did miss my little girl though....

Coldplay stageshow from Tuesday night

Sophie had her first overnight sleep yesterday and slept from 10:30pm through till 5:30am this morning! – Hopefully it will be the start of something beautiful.

It’s my birthday today, Ingrid cooked a lovely dinner for us both tonight and Sophie even gave me a cheeky birthday smile after work! Got lots of cool stuff including MYSKY! I have to admit, I’ve been slowly breaking Ingrid down over the past few weeks convincing her we HAVE to have it…even resorting to reverse psychology, she now believes she will benefit immensely from it too!

MY SKY...you beauty!

Shit…I forgot you read this Ingrid…you will love it babe…honest!
Brad

No time to update

Brad sent me this photo from his hotel room in Sydney...nice veiw!

Sorry, didn’t get the chance to do an update yesterday as Brad was on a work junket in Sydney to see a Coldplay gig (hard work I am told!), so with one person down I didn’t have time. But Sophie and I had a lovely day with Sophie being a perfect angel, eating and sleeping without problems. Aunty Katie came over with pizza after work to keep me company incase it all turned to custard and even stayed the night which made us all safe and secure in the knowledge that there was one more ‘body’ in the house. Thank goodness it all went well and I am not a frazzled mother today. Although saying that Sophie has been harder to settle today and waking every couple of hours wanting a feed rather than every four – hope she isn’t trying to put us into a new routine!

I went for a drive this afternoon as she couldn’t go to sleep and of course the car always works when we need to, so here I am looking the worse for wear driving down the motorway when Sophie starts screaming! To top it all off I then hit a stand still traffic jam where we were stuck in the car for 20 minutes! Sophie’s wailing was getting louder and louder and I couldn’t do a thing for her. In the end I had to jump out of the car and clamber into the backseat to put a dummy in her mouth and turned up the radio to sing to her, all the while hoping firstly that no one else could hear me and secondly that the traffic wouldn’t start moving with me stuck in the back. She eventually fell asleep but I think it was her way of tuning out my terrible singing – anything to get away from that.

Ingrid

What the hell is on daddy's head??

Sometimes I do wonder about my daddy. This morning I woke up early, so mummy came in and changed me, then brought me in to see him before he went off to work...I almost filled my pants though (again) when I saw him asleep - he had on his head some sort of...arhhh...um…I don’t actually know what you call it?…

Mummy did tell me he’s been wearing his 'Speight's ear-muffs' to bed recently, apparently, it blocks out my so-called crying in the middle of the night...fair enough I 'spose, but that doesn’t explain why he was wearing the same thing last Friday when he went ten-pin bowling with his work mates!

He’s pretty cool my dad, but please, don’t let him dress me next time we go out into public...I may be only 7 weeks old, but hey, I still need to look good.

Sophie xx

Sunshine on a Winters day

Ingrid & Sophie enjoying the sunshie on the deck

I stayed up last night with Sophie, we did constructive things like watching horror movies and loads of sport. As Ingrid mentioned yesterday, Sophie didn’t want to sleep at all, so I ended up watching the movie while rocking her bassinet for the entire movie! She did drift off to sleep eventually, but crikey, it was a very long afternoon and night...

Had a visit today from the Farrelly’s, (Rog, Lisa and their two girls Olivier and Grace.) I can remember seeing little Grace when she was around Sophie’s age, now she’s 18 months or so and running around and full of beans...it’s kind of funny thinking that Sophie will be that age very soon, yet hard to imagine at the same time.

Sophie moments before her shower, not sure if she's excited or petrified by the thought!

It was a cracker day today, the sun was shining so after Rog and Lisa left, we bundled up little Sophie, threw her in the car and went for a cruise around Auckland. She starts to grizzle when you pull up to lights or stop, so I now have to brake a long way before lights and inch my way up every so slightly so the car is still moving…it must piss other people off, but oh well, you gotta do what works I 'spose!

I’m off to Sydney on Tuesday to see a concert. (Coldplay) It will be the first time away from the girl’s since birth so I am feeling a little bit guilty (and just a wee bit excited too). I’ll make sure I give Ingrid a night off real soon too so she can go out with friends and not have to worry about bubs for the night, easier to say though, I don’t think either of us will ever feel completely guilt free away from Sophie for a while.

Spot the difference, one is the captain of the Aussie cricket team, the other Roger from work!

Brad

A Day of Two Halves

We started off today with me feeding Sophie downstairs and watching a horror on sky and Brad having a sleep in, or at least trying to. Then Auntie Katie came around to visit and finally catch Sophie while she was awake as I am sure everyone thinks she is just a figment of our imagination, mind you babies sleep and need to sleep a lot and there’s no way I am going to wake her up to show her off to visitors (sorry everyone) but it just means that when you go home we have a ratty grumpy baby for the rest of the day (read more about that). Anyway, Sophie was just an angel when Katie was here and even went straight to sleep on my shoulders just to show Katie how easy it all is. Then I finally went to the hairdressers to get my hair coloured after nine weeks of it looking like crap – mind you its not that much better now, they didn’t do the best of jobs like usual, I think they were all in a hurry to get away and start partying.

Sophie giving Katie the once over...

Unfortunately this is where it all goes downhill. I get home to Sophie crying and Brad stressed as she woke up just as I left and didn’t want to go back to bed, we made sure her nappy was dry, and that she had enough food, gave her lots of cuddles and made sure she wasn’t too hot or cold, but still she screamed the house down. She had worked herself up and was very very tired, but couldn’t get to sleep and we tried everything. In the end poor Brad was left watching a movie and rocking her for a couple of hours to sleep while I crashed after not getting much sleep the night before either. Finally she went to sleep and slept pretty well during the night…

Ingrid

Sophie's big sleeps

The last few days she has been having huge sleeps and lots of playing in between

Sophie gets her injections today...ouch.

Do you think she enjoyed getting them?

Into the finals!

Not a lot to report on the Sophie front today, she's grizzly and not sleeping well. Seems to be the 6 week growth spurt we're hearing all about. She's still damn cute though...

The big news: We won our Indoor cricket Semi-final tonight and qualify directly to the grand final! (I was a bit bummed because I thought the final would be next Wednesday when I'm in in Sydney, but because we kicked arse tonight, we get a bye next week before playing the final the following Wednesday)...you beauty.

Brad

Sophie’s crazy parents

What the?...

Firstly let me just explain the ridiculous photo above – we went to a renewal of wedding vowels just a few weeks before I gave birth and the couple in question had a room set up at their house for us to all do a dress up and photo session, the above was the result and I can’t even blame drinking for the outcome! We had a great time and Matt and Steph both looked awesome and the ceremony was beautiful and very moving.

On to today, what an eventful day Sophie and I had, firstly we had our mums and bubs class which was all about baby development and things to do at playtime to stimulate their brains and help them grow into big bright strong adults, I tried a couple of things on Sophie when we got home, but she didn’t want a bar of it, she was only interested in food, food and more food.

Luckily today I decided to walk up to the letterbox to collect the mail as usually I leave it for Brad to get on his way home, anyway as I walked past one of the houses that we share the driveway with I heard someone yelling ‘help’ and looked into the garage of the house the voice was coming from and found the elderly neighbour lying in her garage! The poor thing had had a bit of a fall and hurt herself quite badly and couldn’t move, I asked how long she had been lying there for and she said about an hour! Imagine if I hadn’t gone to check the letterbox, the poor old thing would have had to wait the rest of the day for the rest of the neighbours to arrive home from work! Anyway it was pretty obvious that she had done some pretty major damage to her ankle and needed to get it looked at, she was pretty insistent that she didn’t want to go to hospital as she felt really stupid and embarrassed, but when I tried to pick her up and pop her in the car I couldn’t move her! So I called for an ambulance, they were very good and arrived within about 10 minutes, I hung around when they arrived to help get her handbag and house keys and lock the place up for her and lent her my phone to call her grandson and then she was off! Sophie was an angel and slept through all of the drama even though it was well past her dinnertime, however as soon as I got her in the house she woke up squawking for food and then proceeded to be hard work for the rest of the day until about 5.30 when I finally got her to bed – so I am about to have my dinner, which will be the first thing I have eaten since breakfast this morning! Whew what a day, I might just spend all of tomorrow in bed recuperating.

Ingrid

"Tell Me Why Sophie Don't Like Monday's"

Sorry, old photo, but check Sophie out throwing a wobbly!...the bottom lip is priceless.

"I DON'T LIKE MONDAY'S"

THE REAL LYRICS

The sillybubs chip in Sophie's head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna get to sleep today
She’s gonna scream then shit and moan
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reason
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to be shown

Tell me why
Sophie don’t like Mondays
She needs to sleep
The whole day down...

Brad Geldof

Coffee Group Girls

Thursday coffee group on Sunday

The above photo was taken at our last coffee group, which we all wished was in Greece as the backdrop would suggest, but alas it was taken at our local café in Birkenhead, Auckland. Our coffee group is a great outlet for us girls to get together and discuss any issues good or bad and to toss around ideas, we all hope that sometime soon in the future, it will turn into the wine group, just like the daddies get to do the same at beer group! So to introduce some of the group from the front and running clockwise is:

Fiona (holding her lovely daughter Kaela)
Me
Jenni
Rowena
Marta
Vanessa
Libby
Theresa
Becky

Hopefully as time goes on and the babies get bigger we can actually get photos of mums and bubs too, but at this stage if they are asleep then they stay where they are (usually in their carseats), because trying to get a baby back to sleep when out and about is almost impossible!

Ingrid

Daddy and Sophie watching the All Blacks

"The match is too close...I can't watch!"

The mighty AB's

Daddy's little Girl

"You reckon she takes after her old man?

Snow in Auckland?

Today has been a bit of an unsettled day in the King household, started off well with Sophie sleeping for six hours overnight and another four hours after that, but then it all went downhill from there with Sophie being a bit unsettled. So I took her off for a drive to The Rock to see her daddy and his workmates which kept her happy for an hour and then back home where she then played up for the rest of the afternoon. Anyway I finally got her off to sleep at 4.00pm when suddenly the most vicious storm just rolled in with thunder so loud it shook the house and lightening at the same time, it then poured with rain and produced the most amazing hailstorm, so much came down that it actually looked as if it was snowing in Auckland. The most amazing thing about the storm? Sophie slept right through it and then woke up five minutes after it had stopped! Amazing what babies can sleep through.

Ingrid

Six weeks today

Gosh I can’t believe six weeks have gone already! Little Sophie has changed so much in that time and really has developed her own little personality – a very fiery one at that… damn Taurean, just like her mother.

Isn't she just the cutiest!

Today we had our weekly coffee group at the local café, love going along and catching up with all the other mothers from our antenatal group and seeing their little bubs growing too and discussing any problems we may be having. However I must say that things are much, much better with Sophie than we endured from the beginning, thank goodness! So a huge thank you to everyone that helped and sent great advice our way.

Next Thursday will be an interesting post as Sophie is booked in to have her immunizations done! Mmmmm, maybe I should go away for the night and leave Brad to babysit!

Ingrid

Good Day

Today Sophie has been the perfect angel (so far anyway, fingers crossed), after a bit of an unsettled day yesterday she has gone to bed happy and off to sleep nice and easily. Lets hope it stays that way for the rest of the evening and into the night, so we all get a good nights sleep. My mum, Nicci, has come up to help out for a couple of days and has been fabulous at just getting those horrid jobs out of the way that I just haven’t had time to do and even let me go out for an hour to do the shopping! Although that was a strange feeling as I kept thinking I had left something behind and couldn’t wait to get home to see her, luckily she slept right through and didn’t miss me at all! So here is how today shaped up from midnight last night.

Yes Brad made me wear his smelly hat because I hadn't done my hair!

3am Sophie woke for feed, put back down to sleep at 4am
6am Sophie woke for feed, far to early as far as I was concerned as she normally sleeps for four hours at night, but she was adamant she wanted to eat and then play, so back down to sleep at 7.30am
8.30am Sophie decided she was going to wake up again, but I was not having any of it and decided she was going to stay in bed until a proper time had lapsed for feeding, rocked her off to sleep
11.15am Sophie woke for feed, had a bit of a play, we laughed at the faces she pulled and back down to sleep at 12.45pm
3.30pm Sophie woke for feed, had a bit of a play and went back down to bed at 5pm

8.30 we had to wake Sophie for a feed, she had her fill and started to fall asleep. so back off to bed at 9.15pm and so far not a murmer out of her.

Brad is off playing cricket and due back in at 11pm, so he can do her late night feed while I get a few hours sleep before starting all over again, a bit like groundhog day!

Three generations of girls

In between the feeds, I managed to get the shopping done, help mum with a couple of chores, have a shower, get a 20min nap in and actually have some lunch! Still didn’t get the chance to do my hair or put any make up on, but hopefully as soon as she starts to sleep through the night a bit more I will get the energy to do just that!

Ingrid

Sophie's new toy...

After being hounded by tele-marketers on the phone all day long, daddy finally caved in and made a donation to the Westpac Helicopter Service. They were pretty good though and sent us this complementary teddy bear as a thanks. The bear turned up completely kitted out with bandages and a broken leg...Sophie obviously felt sad for the poor thing and showed her concern...

Brad

Sophie knew...

You should have seen little Sophie today, she was going crazy, doing handstands and back flips, breakdancing on the table and grinning from ear to ear!... I quickly grabbed the camera and took a photo...it was a real shame there was a power black-out in Auckland for most of the day because this is all that was caught on camera…

If only the power was on...you would've been amazed by this photo!

I think Sophie must have had a premonition regarding the power outage today. I should have noticed the warning sings last night. The greedy guts skulled down her late night feed in record time (she takes after her mummy’s teenage drinking days) and then produced the biggest POWER chuck I have ever seen in my life! She did well to completely miss her bib too...the whole lot ended up going through my hair, down my back and all over the floor…,I reckon she knew something was up...

Brad

Sophie's everywhere!

It seems as if every second person is named SOPHIE these days! Before SOPHIE was born we didn't know any SOPHIE’S at all, now everywhere you turn you hear the name. I also read somewhere that SOPHIE is one of the most popular girl’s names this year...that sucks, we loved the name and thought it was relatively unique...I guess millions of others thought the same huh?

Ingrid also goes to a couple of coffee groups and three are now 4 SOPHIE’S out of 16 or so babies...that’s just plain scary. There’s brand new shows on telly with female characters named…wait for it SOPHIE, even the bloody adds on TV have little SOPHIE’S on them!

We haven’t actually leagally named SOPHIE yet, we have to do it within the first two months and we didn't name her for a few days after birth, so nothing on the birth certificate either…mmmmm I wonder...

Brad

Sophie's first All Balck game

I thought Sophie’s new All Black bib thing was going to jinx the first test of the year…but then I heard her mutter “come on boys!" near the end of the game, they obviously heard her and ran away with the win in the last 10 minutes...nice work Sophie!

Brad and Sophie's All Black game

We gave Sophie her first shower this morning, she seemed to really enjoy being held with warm water streaming all over her and looked really relaxed, I even saw a couple of smiles sneak in too. It’s a lot easier showering with her than giving her a bath. I got the easy part by holding her and making stupid baby noises, while Ingrid got the rough end of the stick - she had to dry, dress and change her afterwards. I shouldn't laugh but Sophie now drops her bottom lip when she's upset and both Ingrid and I were in stitches today laughing at how silly she looked! (it sounds awful I know, but I'm sure Sophie does it for sympathy votes)

She didn’t sleep that well during the morning and afternoon today, but then made up for it big time this evening by sleeping for close to 6 hours. We thought we’d leave her to sleep and not wake her, to see if it makes any difference overnight and tomorrow…we’ll let you know if it works or not.

Brad

"What the freakin' is going on here!"