Hair cut time!

I had my hair cut today! It's been over a year since my last one so I thought it was about time. My hairdresser, Nathan, suggested I try not to leave it so long next time... heheh. I agree - it was really driving me crazy being so long. It's still long now, a bit shorter around the front. He actually cut off about 6 inches! And spent most of the time exclaiming at how healthy my hair was and telling all the other staff in the salon to come and have a look. Boy did I feel like a star. He is such a lovely guy!

Anyway, compare the pictures. The first is me, now. The second is me with my big belly and hair down to my bum! This was taken just four days before Elora was born.

A cold and windy party

I would like to say "Today dawned clear and still" but I would be lying. The weather man was actually right this time. It was a cold (around 20°C) and windy day, with the occasional shower to keep us on our toes.

Our catering-helpers arrived at 11am for a 2pm start. I have to say, they were the best thing ever! Lorraine and her sister Linda did the majority of the food preparation - cutting up veges for the platter, frying the spring rolls, cooking the chicken sticks, cutting up the fruit... My mother steamed the Chinese yum cha dishes which we always get (for those in Sydney I highly recommend Lai Shing - they supply the restaurants and their Siu Mai, Har Gao and all the rest are absolutely delicious) and my brother and sister-in-law helped serve as well. We had a number of last minute cancellations but we still ended up with over 60 people - quite a manageable number, especially considering the weather!

We dressed Elora in the most spectacularly cute outfit which Grandma had bought - a little pink sun-dress with matching green cardigan. I don't think she'll ever get to wear it again since it's a "newborn" size. I added some pink tights and a beanie/beret to keep her warm. So cute! It's fun having a girl to dress up :)

We made some speeches - the usual thanking people for coming, and explaining Elora's full name. Her middle name is "Jane", after her great-great-grandmother (Dan's mother's grandmother), and her Chinese name is "Wen Mei" . "Wen" is the generation name for the girls and means gentle and wise. "Mei" is my mother's Chinese name and means beautiful - a very girly name. As one of my friends put it, if it was a dress it'd be pink and frilly, probably with flowers embroidered on it with lace applique.

Next, Elora's godfather, Dave (who, incidentally, was also the MC at our wedding) got up and expressed his delight and honour at being asked to help us look after her. Having been an only child, he relished the opportunity to be a part of Elora's life. Her other godparents, Jaime and Shannon are currently living in Vancouver, but our friend Anna (Atticus' godmother) read something they wrote instead. Since they couldn't be here, she decided to "channel" their spirits by pinning a large photo of them to her chest. It was so neat and funny! Thanks all you guys for such wonderful speeches and helping to make the day a memorable one.

Curse the weather man!

I'm not having much luck with the weather lately... "Showers" were forecast earlier this week so I put off doing the washing, and of course it has been beautifully warm and sunny every day! At least they were right when they said today was going to be "Fine", and I finally got the nappies washed.

But, curse you Tim Bailey (the channel ten news weather man)! On Tuesday we had a man come around to measure and quote for a marquee for our big party on Sunday. With chairs, delivery and installation it was going to cost almost $500 to hire! Ack! The forecast at the time was for it to be fine, and showers all week leading up to the day, so we decided to risk it and not get the big marquee. As I've already pointed out, he was SO wrong about the showers, and now, alas, alak, the only day that showers are forecast for is, you guessed it, Sunday! Wah!

I'm so very annoyed. We were expecting about 100 people and were planning on having the event in the backyard. Now, thankfully, the numbers are more like 70 but we're still going to have to fit them in the patio since we don't have the space inside. Thankfully my friend Stephen lent us his marquee which will hopefully suffice!

I'm very upset by it all. I keep checking the forecast in the vain hope that something miraculous will happen and it will be fine. Perhaps they'll be wrong again, but knowing my luck it will be a cold, wet Mun Yit for Elora.

Was five, now six

It's Dante's birthday today. We successfully managed to avoid having a party for him this year. Dan offered him the choice of that or a day at Luna Park with one friend. He chose the latter. Yesterday Dan and his sister fulfilled the promise and a fun day was had by all, with only one injury (a black eye/bruised cheek) suffered by D's friend, Ewan.

Last night we had his cousin (that's her in the picture above) come for a sleep-over and then we had an informal roast lunch with her and the happy grandparents to celebrate his actual birthday.

As usual I made a sterling effort with the cake... Grandma brought "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" candles but all the Hs and Ys had broken so we ended up just using his initials. He didn't seem to mind - especially after eating a HUGE piece of chocolate cake!

We bought him a Playstation game "Buzz Junior - Jungle Party" that came with these neat buzzer controllers... and played that for most of the day. Poor Dante got a little bored by the end but we had to pry Alexandra away from it when her mother arrived to come and get her! A pretty fun game - great for kids. I recommend it!

What colour are Elora's eyes?

Dan and I are having real trouble trying to work out the colour of our daughter's eyes.

When they were born, both boys had really dark blue-purple coloured eyes which lightened to the most amazing green-hazel coloured ones, somewhat like their fathers (but with a hint of my brown ones).

Elora's eyes were dark, dark, dark when she was born. We thought that she had brown eyes, going with the overall Asian look that she has - thick black hair, big Mongolian spot... It seems that the "Asian-ness" has increased with each subsequent child (Dante was a baldy until 18 months and had no mongolian spot, Atticus had a bit more hair and a small spot).

But now every time I look at Elora's eyes, they seem to be different. Last night Dan was sure that they were brown. This morning I'm sure that they are bluey-grey.

What do you think?

Personal pronoun problems

An interesting thing about having a girl after two boys is that I keep calling her "him" or "he". But at least I'm not the only one that does it... I've caught the grandparents doing it as well. You'd think that after years of wanting a girl, and months of being pregnant, I'd be able to get my head around "her" and "she", but then again sleep deprivation does make you do crazy things.

The other thing I find myself doing is not calling her by her name. So when I do stop calling her "him", I tend to say "the girl" rather than "Elora". I think it's a habit I picked up from my father!

All is quiet... for now

Haven't had much to say in the last few days - not much has been happening. I just spend the days at home with Elora while Dan takes the boys in to school/childcare/work. We've had some difficult nights lately which means I've been zombie-like during the days (unless I can fit in some naps) but otherwise things are going pretty well.

Now I'm starting to organise Elora's Mun Yit - her one month celebration. Atticus' one ended up being quite a big affair... this one is turning out to be just as big, or even bigger! I don't know why I do this to myself. But we've decided to get someone in to help with the catering and possibly even get people in beforehand to help clean up the yard and the house so that should make things easier. We're planning to have an outdoor thing in my folks' yard - I hope the weather holds up. It won't be for another two weeks - a little late but it's Dante's birthday next Sunday and half my brothers will be out of town (going on the big NSW bike ride) so we postponed it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to showing off my little girl to our friends and family. I can't help thinking how amazingly cute she is... but I am just a teensie bit biased. *grin*

Atti's MRI

Atti in his cute hospital gown

It's been a long day for us. Atticus had his MRI today under a general anaesthesia.

We had to be at the hospital by 7:15am (we were only 15 minutes late). Thankfully Mama was able to get Dante ready for school and drop him off at a more reasonable hour!

Poor Atti had to fast from 3:30am (so basically nothing since dinner the night before). He managed okay - the ambulatory care ward was full of distractions - until he saw the "food bag" that I'd brought... then he started wailing for sultanas until Dan was able to distract him once again. We didn't actually go down to the scan until almost 10:30am. I didn't get to go in to the room since I had Elora with me - Dan helped hold him down while they put him under.

We waited for about an hour before they brought him back. I was worried about how he'd react to coming out of the anaesthesia but he was terrific! Dawg was waiting for him, and he was given an ice block right away. What a champion! He recovered really well, although he was ravenously hungry (for some reason!!).

Now Dan and I are both utterly exhausted (especially me since I've been awake since 4:30am without my usual mid-morning nap). Hopefully everything will be fine - they didn't seem to indicate that there was anything to take note of, but our paediatrician will let us know if there's anything wrong.

Newborns are like puppets

I jinxed myself with that last post - last night I was up for three hours again (from 1am to 4am) and here I am, wide awake again tonight (it's 2:45am)... although I have just managed to get Elora to go to sleep.

And yet, even though I'm tired and have sore neck muscles, I'm so ridiculously happy! I love to just stop and gaze at my little girl - she's so cute with her crop of thick black hair and small nose and perfect little lips. She has long fingers and toes and her feet are long. Her legs are so skinny! And when she moves, I swear she looks like she could be an animatronic puppet - the movements are so slow and slight.

The boys are being ever so delightful, too. Specifically, Atti's response to "baby Elora". He keeps trying to feed her bits of whatever he's snacking on (yesterday it was biscuits and apple) and puts Duplo blocks inside her bassinette for her to play with, I presume. The other day he gave her his "Dawg" for a brief time. When I explained that she only drinks milk, he then tried giving her his own cup! When she cries he gets concerned and wants to see what's going on (he'll climb onto the couch to see into the bassinette). He's just gorgeous! I know I've mentioned this before, but I can't help being surprised and pleased.

Good night, bad night

Today is Elora's due date! And to celebrate she kept me up more than half the night.

I've noticed that there's a pattern to this night-waking. It seems that we have an off night, then a good night, alternating daily. I hope it gets better soon, though. We (Elora and I) were up from 2am to 5am last night, quiet for 45 min and then up until 6:30am when I finally managed to get her settled. Ack. The joy of newborns. At least I was able to have a fairly good sleep-in this morning after Dan took Dante to school and Atticus went next door.

Guitar heroics

What a day we had yesterday!

Dan has taken some time off since Elora's birth to help me out at home and all that. It's really nice having him around. Yesterday morning while he was dropping the kids off at school/child care I did four loads of washing and last night's dishes. (I'd actually washed two loads the night before but hung them out yesterday). The weather was beautiful and sunny, although showers were forecast... but it was supposed to rain the day before and ended up being gorgeous and dry all day. Plus I had a bunch of nappies which really needed washing! Four big loads over two clothes lines!

Then we went out to the shops. Had lunch. Dropped some paperwork off at the accountant. Looked into prices of a Playstation 2. Bought some clothes for the kids because the local Myer is closing down and stuff was 50% off already reduced prices.

Bought a PS2! I'm so spoilt! And we bought Guitar Hero II with a guitar controller. Yay! We searched around and the guy at the shop was really nice and matched all the different prices we found. It added up pretty quickly, though. That credit card ran hot yesterday!

Anyway, we came out of the shopping centre to discover, to my dismay, that it had rained. Not only had it rained but it STORMED. Seriously. Thunder, lightning, flash floods in the outer suburbs! Cars were dragged away in the floods! Wow!

Of course we missed it all because we were in the contained environment of a big shopping centre. And then I remembered the washing. :( We rushed home to check out the damage. The clothes were dripping wet! Wetter than when they came out of the machine. All that work in the morning for nothing!

So now the baby's room (which she hasn't moved into, yet) has turned into a "drying" room. I borrowed all Mama's drying racks and the room is full of them (and our own).

And then I spent the rest of the evening and a chunk of today playing Guitar Hero to ease my spirits... because of course it was warm and sunny again today with not a drop of rain.