What's new?

Well, it has been a while since the last update - and quite a bit has been happening. David went back to the doctor's for another injection on Tuesday 13 December - this time for pneumoccocal. He didn't like it very much, but got through it well. We weighed David, and now he weighs 5.15kgs lightly clothed, which should be 5kgs bare weight. Not bad for 11 weeks. David is still looking long & lean - no sign of Michelin man yet. He is feeding well, and in this hot weather he is feeding more often, "snacking" all afternoon if he is not asleep. I am expressing some breast milk so that he can have an extra feed in the evening, when he seems to get very hungry.

David is also sleeping through more - generally about six hours. So last night, he had a feed finishing at midnight, then slept until 5.50am. Other nights he skips the late (10.00pm to 12.00am) feed and sleeps through from 9.00pm until 3.00 or 4.00am. Unfortunately, I can't always tell which feed he will skip, and get off to bed early. Sometimes I am waking up at 2.00 or 3.00am, while he is sleeping. The real bonus is that I am getting him back to sleep after the morning feed for another couple of hours. If I can get a couple more hours sleep myself it makes all the difference. This morning, after the 6.00am feed, a shower and another feed, David slept for over three hours. We have moved the bassinet into the cot, out of our room and David doesn't seem to mind at all. Tonight we are going to try him sleeping in the cot alone.

Dad finally finished travelling, returning from Melbourne on Tuesday evening. It was unusual to have Dad around on a weekday, and awake to see David in the morning. This morning (Friday 16th) Dad took David into the shower for the very first time. David liked it! He seemed to enjoy having the water spray on his face & being held by Dad. Apparently this is good training for babies before taking them swimming - it gets them used to water on their face.

David went to his first Christmas party on Thursday 15th. We were invited by Aspect to join their Christmas party, at Hunter's Hill Bowling Club. A hot and windy afternoon & evening, but lovely. David was the youngest there, but not the only baby. He checked out Madison, who is four and a half months old, and looking very pretty. Zac and Hayden (sons of Sam and Dave respectively) who are three and a half were very impressed with David. David had a marvellous time, looking at everything and all the new people. He is very social, with big wide eyes and loves being nursed and being able to see and be involved in the conversation and seeing what is happening.

From a development point of view, David is getting a little more advanced every week. He is moving around more on the ground, and noticeably getting more co-ordinated with his hands. He is grasping and holding things more, for example, he pulls his dummy out of his mouth and then holds it in his fingers.

In relation to the dummy, it is interesting that sometimes he is interested and will suck the dummy, while other times he prefers his hand or thumb, and will reject the dummy entirely. Apparently, it is a developmental milestone that he can distinguish his thumb and suck it (rather than just his fist) so instead of being worried about the thumbsucking, I should be proud!

Today we all went out to lunch, for the Bstar Christmas lunch, at the Barn restaruant, just up the road from both our home & the office. David was very well behaved (of course) and generally regarded by Sharon and Louise as pretty well perfect, and an intrinsic part of the team.

David is finding the hot weather a bit trying. We have had one impossible day (39C) and quite a lot of unpleasant weather - for example, today it was 31C and it is humid and 30C tonight, with some thundery rain just starting (hopefully to cool the air down). We have been coping by sponging David down with a cool damp washer and dressing as lightly as possible. Dad just told me that he has taken David out into the rain and he liked the few drops falling on his face!

Coming up, we will see Annie and David Haselhurst and their daughter Nada on Monday 19 December for afternoon tea - more cousins! Then we will be off to WA for Christmas and to see lots more relatives. We are not sure what to expect from the long flight to Perth (5 hours), hopefully it will be fine! More news later!!

Milestones at Ten Weeks

This is David saying "It's my bottle and I'll hold it if I want to! Just don't even think about taking it away."

Well, David is 10 weeks old today and we are celebrating two milestones reached yesterday.

David has rolled for the first time! Not witnessed by either of his parents however. David had fallen asleep whilst feeding, so I put him, complete with pillow on the floor, on his quilt. He woke up later, and was making a few noises, but was otherwise fine, so I thought that I would finish the washing up, before picking him up. A few minutes later he started to cry, with a different note. Looking over I realised that he had made his way off the pillow, onto the floor, on his front and at right angles to the pillow! He was a little upset because he was face down in the quilt. He didn't seem to appreciate the enormity of being mobile - he just wanted to be comforted and fed. Well, we've been expecting it, but it always happens when you don't expect it.

The other milestone is that David has graduated to big boy nappies, from Newborn size to Infant. More capacity, for those times when David is working hard on filling his nappy.

More generally, everything is now going into his mouth - in particular, toys and his fist and his thumb. At present he doesn't seem to have a favourite, and his fist or thumb can be replaced by a dummy, but we will just have to see if that continues. He is reaching out and pulling toys to him in his pram or on the floor - but not yet grabbing them from us when we wave them at him.

Paul was home over the weekend and David seemed to be both more excited to have dad around and a bit more grizzly. As you can see, he was happy to have Dad feed him though!

The weather has changed again here in Sydney, from cool and unsettled to very hot and unsettled. David doesn't seem to like the hot weather too much and has been grizzly again today (over 30C). Hopefully that will change as we all get used to the summer weather! Paul is travelling again this week but will be back for the weekend, before heading down to Melbourne for a short trip. That should then be all the business travelling until the new year - we just have to get ready for the trip to Wagin for Christmas.

Here are the party photos

Here are the photos of David from the party - I haven't managed to load them in the blog of 25 November.

As you can see, David was very social and popular - going out of his way to use his charm, particularly with blondes! These photos show him with Sue and Grace.

Update at 1 December

Well, it is the first day of summer in Sydney and after a week of rain, the sun shone! The rain has been good news, with the dam capacity actually increasing by 1.5% this week to 41.6%. Mostly, we have dodged the showers when getting out in the pram. However, I did regret not having a big plastic cover for the pram - one of the things that we haven't needed to date, because of the drought.

David had his 2 month immunisation injection on Tuesday 29 November - or most of it. He had the BIG shot, with 7 or so vaccines in it - triple antigen, HIB, HepB etc. but the GP & I decided to leave the pneumococcl for a couple more weeks. Mostly because David is still very small, and because he cried a lot. Less traumatic for us all. David also bled a little - his first band aid. I removed it fairly quickly, as the GP warned against leaving it on as it may cause sensitivity (to the glue, I assume). However, after a feed and filling a very big nappy, David appeared fine. I was warned that he could be a little dopey and he did have a nap. He was so fine that we dropped in to see our previous next door neighbour, Val in East Balmain. Val was home and loved meeting David. David was (once again) very well behaved and impressed Val greatly.

We attended the mother's group on Wednesday morning, this time at the Barn Cafe (rather than Balmain Early Childhood Centre). It was lovely to see everyone, and most (9 of 11) mothers managed to get to the coffee meeting. David is still smaller than a lot of the other babies, but very alert and interested in everything he sees. It was noticeable that there were two types of customers at the cafe - women only tables, principally mothers with babies and men only tables, principally men in suits discussing business. Generally, the mothers' tables looked as though they were having more fun.

This last photo was taken today - as you can see, David is now chuckling. It is one of the nicest things that he wakes up happy!