He is here!

Our lovely boy has arrived - last Friday, and he is home today.

There are 100 stories to tell already. Backwards from today they include:

• the welcome he got when he came home today from my nephew, niece and Thomas
• Gaye's parents sprint back across two states when they had only just left the day before
• Her father's joyful tears at his name
• Gaye's amazing calm spirit as she manages to breast feed and recover from a c-section
• Thomas' joy and gentleness - we could not be more proud of how he has responded to our new arrival.
• His actual birth and the lead up to it

But the biggest and longest story is going to be the one about how he won and kept our hearts - that will be never ending.

But right now - this minute - I must not spend time on the computer as I have a mother and baby to worship

just to clarify

Thomas has somethings he has said that I want to remember

• 'it's not for talking is it mum?' is his way of confirming that a decision has been made (it is because I say 'we will have to talk about it' as a delay or you know so I can talk about something with Gaye first)

• when we first got Lightning (his puppy) I dutifully cooked up rice and organic meat for him one night. Lightning wasn't that jazzed (the rice was a bit sticky) and Thomas was very certain that Lightning just wasn't going to be the sort of dog who liked 'scraps' I said 'they are hardly scraps darling, I cooked them up for him and used lovely organic products' he said 'well mum what can I say, just for this conversation lets call them scraps'
• this week was a cracker. This week we were all sitting around the table and I made some comment about the baby coming and he said. "Mum, this baby is my brother, Gaye is this babies mummy. you aren't Mum, you are my Mum, you can be in the babies family and you can help teach Gaye to be a mummy, but you are not the babies Mummy!
  

chocolate and go-carts

Easter summed up

• We spent Easter in Canberra with my family.
• Gaye made hot-cross buns on Easter morning in my mothers kitchen and we ate them hot out of the oven for breakfast.
• We spent afternoons in the park out the front of my parents place with the kids riding bikes and the go-cart my Dad made them some months ago.
• Thomas wrote the Easter bunny a note 'Dear Easter Rabbit, please can I have a carmel egg and a wizard wand. Please make it a real wand. Or can I have a bunny, if you think I can't get the bunny home just leave it at my house, I love you"
• When the kids woke up on Easter morning they were looking at their eggs, my brother (father of Ann (9) and Denis (5) said to them 'what are you doing?' "looking at our eggs" 'this is the only day of the year you can eat chocolate for breakfast get in to it'
• Autum has started and we wore trackpants (him) and long wollen jumpers (us) in the evenings.

we are in...

Well we are in… the last box has been unpacked.

Well sort of…there is a lovely pile of things in the ‘second (babies) bedroom to into the cupboard there, the roof storage is full to the brim with the most useful things at the back and the shed looks like a bomb has hit it BUT we have ebayed, garaged saled and second hand book sold all of our extra stuff. Now we just need to find a place for the current things.

It was not without its drama – the builders have been sloppy with the finishing and so we are in constant conversation with them about when they are coming back to finish, the DA didn’t get through in time for the deck to be built so young Olive-on-the- way will need to hold himself in so we can get it built by my brother on his due date, and Gaye’s brother may as well move in given the amount of painting that needs to be done (how lucky are we to have a deck builder and a painter in the family!). But we are in. And it is lovely.

Gaye started her maternity leave last week (thou she is back in today and tomorrow) but has yet to have had the luxury of a mid day sleep there has been so much to do.

I spent yesterday re-sorting out Thomas’ room and he and I are both happy with it now. He chose the room at the end of the house and it has been quite hard for both he and I to adjust to the shift of him three rooms away. But it looks lovely now. And now the second bedroom (which is next to us) is set up he can sleep there when he wants to.

Even more lovely my sister retrieved his cot from a friend of hers who has had it the last four years or so and we put in up in the bedroom last night. It was pretty surreal to see it again and assemble but I loved waking up with it in our room this morning.

I am a happy parent having lovely beds for both our boys. (OK I admit I am one of those parents who is very happy when they eat their dinner or have snugly pj’s on too).

On Saturday night we took ourselves off to a picnic with pals to celebrate Earth Hour. I am not sure what we were expecting but it didn’t actually go that dark as we looked out on the city. I mean it was darker but not really dark. But a fine time was had by all – largely because it was night and we were eating picnic on a hill to roll down, over and over and over.