2nd birthday weekend

percy had a very active birthday weekend. on friday nite her granma and grandad visited for dinner and present giving, then saturday morning was spent in the park primarily getting soaked in the water sprayer over the sand pit, and sunday was a family trip to the zoo!
i particularly appreciated the friends that came to the park on saturday as i hadn't seen some of them for months or believe it or not years!
the zoo trip was interesting as we didn't anticipate percy's reaction to it at all. in the morning while getting dressed etc we told her we were off to the zoo to see lots of animals. she appeared excited to see crocodiles most of all. she's very into being a "snapping" crocodile at present, plus she likes elephants, lions, koalas, wombats, snakes and frogs. however the crocodiles were a huge disappointment as they lay mostly submerged without moving a muscle. we had doubts percy could even pick one out from the water. i think because animals are always so animated in books she didn't get that at the zoo they mostly just lie about. never mind we're sure to make more visits which she'll enjoy in other ways.
a big hit was the seals! she stood at the window where she could see them swimming excitedly exclaiming "pussy cats!" over and over. we did explain that despite them having whiskers these were definately not cats.
there is also a small wading pool that she enjoyed immensely- so much for rolling her trousers up, she was wet to the armpits in three minutes. she very much liked splashing back and forth with her cousins as they had joined us by this time. at home, after zonking out in the stroller on the way back to the car, and a big two hour sleep there was yet another present to open.
percy also got a perfectly lovely edition of winnie the pooh from her oma, who visited over the weekend. it's got a great binding and very sweet pictures all thru it.

p.s. we figure the lioness, havig come within two metres of the glass was quietly humming "enny meeny myni mo, catching a toddler by the toe..." to herself as she sized up the 15 or so specimens lined up in front of her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PUNKY!

paul got a sleepy percy out of bed this morning at 7am so we could sing her happy birthday before he went to work. i think she liked it, despite being mostly still asleep she smiled cutely. it was a good morning up until she closed her fingers in a drawer. no lasting damage and a close cuddle with kisses and 'more milk' made it all ok.
she was happy at day care this morning eating a big bowl of rice bubbles, that "are popping", when i left. she's going to have grandparent overload this evening. hopefully she sleeps in tomorrow so we can too, i'm feeling knackered this week.

first fight

more of a clash of priorities would be a better way to describe it. last nite for the first time percy wilfully and gleefully thwarted me. sure, we've been at cross purposes before- when to leave the park, what to eat for dinner (whether to eat at all!), to wear or not to wear a nappy and innumerable other instances. last nite's incident was something a little more...

it was time to pack away the toys to prepare for a bath. we keep percy's lego in a big bag that has velcro strips on two sides that allow the bag to unfold down to a flat play mat. i was sticking the velcro together to make the bag and asking percy to help put the lego inside. instead she delighted in pulling the velcro apart resulting in the lego spilling out again. i asked her seven times not to do that and explained that it was bath time so we must pack away the toys to have some space for drying off and getting into jamies. she persisted, laughing the whole time. in response i picked her up, plonking her on the change mat (which you'll recall is on the floor) saying she was not helping and must stay there until i tell her she can get up. this just increased the hilarity! she was off the mat, across the floor and peeling the velcro before i could turn around. repeated replacements on the mat just made her laugh more. and i mean really laugh, she was cracking up in a way i've only heard her do when she is having the best fun, bar nothing. clearly my parenting techniques (make it up as i go) weren't up to this challenge. paul eventually came upstairs and held her while i finished the packing away. then i sat in front of her, holding her shoulders and explained again what i was unhappy about. i know she understood me. i asked her to say sorry to me to which she found many reasons not to; a book not packed away, a CD cover to open, pi coming into the room... she did eventually say 'sorry' tho i think she did not mean it. it was delivered in a loud, abrupt voice; as if she was acknowledging what i wanted and complying, but only for the sake of getting rid of me. i don't think she felt at all contrite.
we had a big hug and then got on with the evening ritual as per normal.

paul and i had a talk later about what happened and whether i was just after restorative justice from a toddler or whether this was laying the ground work for future tasks to be undertaken with mutual compliance for mutual benefit, ie. if we both pack away the toys it will go quicker and we can have a nice bath sooner.
not sure yet....

percy turns two tomorrow! is this our welcome to the terrible two's? ha ha ha

turning two

holy doley! percy is turning two! haven't these couple of years flown by, and been full of adventures?

as seems to be the regime once one is on the procreating treadmill birthdays, and the associated parties are to be attended, or do i mean attended to? if i wasn't such a scrooge i'd even say i enjoy kids parties but in general i'm not sure i do. yeah, it's nice to see percy and other littlies racing around and having fun and eating too much sugar and food colouring. i do like her to be happy and exploring her world and learning to interact with people. it's not an occasion for parents to change their behaviour tho. well! i suppose that's why they are called kids parties.

last saturday our parents group held a morning party for all our about-to-be twos...
here's percy lined up the other culprits: percy, izzy, rose, will, finn, joe, cameron, and lola and max further down the line.
and a picture of percy that i think is her thinking "while pappa is looking the other way, i'll just finish this chocolate crackle..."

sleeping '09

we've been experiencing some quite good sleeping from percy so far this year. (i realise by figuratively saying this out loud i've now jinxed it all to hell!) except when she was ill a couple of weeks back she's either been sleeping thru the nite or only requiring one, occasionally two visits, thru the nite to have a drink of water and to pull her blanket up. these visits are generally over in a matter of minutes as she doesn't need us to sit with her until she's dozed off fully.
the last two mornings i've even had to go into her after 7am to wake her so that we can all get to day care and work on time! hopefully we can convince her to sleep past 7am on weekends from now on too.
in the mornings percy often wakes with a dry nappy. we'll take her jamies off and the old but dry nappy and ask if she wants to sit on the potty. which she generally does, followed by a big pee that then gets tipped in the big toilet and flushed away. i'm hopeful this action is a good indication that toilet training will be a success when we eventually decide to tackle it. while she can tell us when she's pooing it's usually right now, too late to take clothes off and get the potty to her or her to the potty, she seems to pee without informing anyone. i can't tell by looking at her if she is. anyways, not an issue yet.
bring on lots of hours of uninterrupted sleep before august!

second and last

it occured to me as i was re-tucking percy in around 1am this morning and sitting with her for a few minutes to listen to her breathing steadily drop to a deep whisper as sleep took her calmly to rest and dreams, that this second pregnancy of mine is most likely also to be my last. following on from such disrupted sleep over the past two years we don't feel we have the energy or the reserves to do this more than twice. i do believe that we are due a perfect sleeper this time, but even with that it's unlikely we'll be dipping into our genetic pool for a third time.

this makes me realise how precious each sensation and stage of this pregnancy is. every flutter of movement i feel should be cherished. my growing belly rubbed each nite with delicious oils, growing and steadily growing. even those effects i could skip straight over (constipation so bad i feared haemorrhoids could be the only possible result, chronic exhaustion, nausea, and if my pregnancy with percy is a prognostication then close-to-disabling symphysis pubis dysfunction is yet to come) are oddly special. these things won't be experienced again, positive or negative, ever. it's almost as if i must mourn the passing of my pregnancy time to feel happy about letting it go, knowing it won't happen again.
but that's ok, because now i feel a greater connection to my body, it's ability to carry and birth babies, and this little boy squirming around inside me.
second and last and really, really super!

she's a strange one alright

percy has gone back to having baths. which makes little difference to us. one or the other of us occasionally hops in with her tho she's happy to bath, and "swim" by herself.
whenever i hop in with her she insists that i lie down, washes my tummy and then licks my belly button. go figure?! with the rounded tummy i now sport a little water pools in my belly button- does this taste good? i think she's just weird but we don't make an issue out of it; there's no harm in it; it just cracks us up.

really?!

i've just read this story in the smh: www.smh.com.au/news/lifeandstyle/lifematters/cost-of-kids-not-so-high
and i've got to say the guy is a dickhead. a kid in nappies for a year can cost $1000 alone. a good quality double stroller will cost near $1000. child care costs us $80 a day. a private school education will be, and i'm being conservative, $10 000 a year, clothes, food, toys, swimming and ballet and karate lessons, trips to the doctor, health insurance, school excursions, incidentals, car seats, high chairs, petrol or bike tyres lugging the lovelies about, glasses, dentists, speech therapy, soccer boots, swimming goggles... the list is nearly endless. i really don't think 18 years of this and you'd get away with spending $55k.

yes, you don't have to send sprog to private school or to ballet lessons or do a myriad of other things, i still don't see that costing less than 55k over 18 years.

to be fair tho i will try to track down the actual research paper and see how badly smh reported it.

the lottery of life

as i said in my post about last friday i had a few personal reasons for not mentioning this new pregnancy yet. here's the story of one of those reasons, as i wrote it down at the time:

"Wed 19th June 2006
hmmmm... reason for the gap? my last pregnancy ended in miscarriage 8 weeks in. i'm now 6 weeks along again. i can't get excited. i know what the stats are and i know the likelihood of another miscarriage is really low.
but there it is.
let me finish the last story properly.

everything seemed to be going fine. i was peeing all the time, hungry and tired.
we also couldn't help telling people. our parents, karl and sindy, emma and david and on a saturday nite at a party at their home in lilyfield; robyn and phillip.
we'd driven the jeep to rob and phils and when it was time to leave paul was too pissed to drive and i never drove the jeep so we caught a taxi home.
sunday morning we rode the bikes back to rob and phil's, me with the bike rack strapped to the pannier rack. as we rode along i felt a gathering 'moisture', like maybe 5mls of blood, in my knicks. rob and phil weren't home so we loaded up the bikes and went home. my feeling of moisture may have just been sweat as there was nothing there when i showered and changed.
we went to watch a movie in the afternoon. i don't remember which one. part way thru i developed a headache which was pounding by the time we left. i am prone to bad headaches and migraines however i know the usual triggers and i thought this was brought on by not hydrating enough in the morning during the bike ride. even tho it was a short ride and i went thru 2 bottles of water, and more at home.
i insisted we go straight home where i fell asleep on the lounge. i woke about 5:30pm and was bleeding moderatly. what now? is this normal? technically my period was due, if i hadn't had a baby growing inside me.
we rang dr beale's after hours number which just refers to opening hours and the hospital number. so we rang royal prince alfred hospital up the road in newtown/camperdown. i was put thru to maternity. a sympathetic lady spoke with me and after explaining what was happening to me she said it sounded very much like i was having a miscarriage. i then spoke to a doctor who repeated the same assessment. the doctor explained i could attend accident and emergency that evening or come in the morning to EPAS; early pregnancy assessment service. given the likely wait at A&E we opted for EPAS, i was also not in any particular pain. but what else do we do? i don't recall feeling that sad that evening. was the pregnancy real to begin with? wasn't a miscarraige something that happened to other people? what does this mean for our future chances?
god, do we have to tell everyone and what do we do with their reactions?
i slept surprisingly well that sunday nite. monday morning we were up and at EPAS on the dot of 8:30am as we'd been told this was when it opened. maybe this is when the doctors start! over three visits i learnt 7:30am is opening time.
we registered and waited 2 hours. paul called our works during this time to advise we weren't coming in.
i had both an external and vaginal ultrasound. the vaginal was not even uncomfortable, let alone painful as i have since heard it can be. we were advised that given the size of the fetus it had probably died around six weeks.
i am six weeks again right now.
i'm content just to wait. i'm not doing anything different and certainly nothing bad. are you still alive little baby? how can i know? what could i do anyways? i just want the time to pass....

we waited again after the ultrasounds. i was uncomfortable more because there were no pads at home and i had spent the last 20 or so hours with wads of toilet paper in my underpants. great.
finally a doctor spoke with us. he confirmed again that i was experiencing a miscarriage. we were given two options for what to do immediately. a dilation and curette under general anaesthetic or leave my body to expel all the material naturally. as i'm pretty healthy and my body seemed to be doing the job on its own i chose this option.
we left the hospital around 2:30/3pm. we did some shopping- ostensibly for what? easy guess.
paul returned to work and i returned to the lounge.

i bled out on tuesday. i filled 14 maxi pads. it was depressing and distressing. was this a normal amount? i had asked the doctoer yesterday what i could expect. "the usual amount" was the response. obviously he'd never had a miscarraige. what fucking answer is that?! normal! normal? yeah, i do this all the time. i know what normal is.
well, i didn't die, i didn't even faint or suffer much pain. my lower abdomen felt tight and uncomfortable but okay.
i stayed home on wednesday with a medium amount of bleeding. i returned to work on thursday with lighter bleeding but unfortunately painful cramps - maybe it was in the increase in moving and walking.
friday was a painful crampy day. saturday was amanda's birthday. i tried to go but ended up crying on the steps at redfern train station. i think i was hormonal and because the trains weren't running i was swamped and gave up.
2nd ultrasound on 7th march. arrived at 7:30am and got thru quicker. still not complete. maybe the ultrasound loosened things up. wednesday at work i passed some large clots and lots of blood. a bit alarming. i would have preferred to be at home. on friday i had drinks with the girls at the opera bar and on sunday was david and leannes wedding. finally by tues 14th march i stopped bleeding.
at the 3rd ultrasound on fri 17th the doctor pronounced the miscarriage complete.
the end.

except for the legacy."


that's what i wrote three years ago. i've had moments when i missed that little life. in this lottery we're doing ok.

march photos

couple of piccies of percy enjoying a 'babycinno' and trying on my shoes...

music afficiando

percy often gets sung to sleep in the evenings. paul does this six nites out of seven, which makes sense because my repertoire consists of the first verse of "my favourite things" and my made up song to "hush little baby don't you cry" (see entry some time back in mid 2007.) paul has a far expanded song list to call upon. a few weeks ago he told me afterwards he was running thru said collection when he hit upon "smells like teen spirit." percy really liked it! then again when he was asking her what she wanted to hear just a few nites back he went thru four or so options before asking "smells like teen spirit?" resounding "yes" answer and when he'd got the end of the song "that's a good song pappa."
talk about make us laugh! percy is clearly developing a fine muscial appreciation at a young age. ha ha ha ha...

my oh my oh my

what a day we had yesterday! all's well that ends well tho, hey? isn't that what they say?

i woke yesterday morning fearing that i was leaking fluid and possibly experiencing contractions. i know, i have failed to mention that i am pregnant again so far on this blog. this was for a few personal reasons and that this blog really is supposed to be about percy. anyways, back to yesterday's tale of adventure...
i shared my concerns with paul and we thought about the best thing to do. tearing off to the emergency department at rpa didn't seem to be it. i even went so far to ask paul to smell the fluid i had wiped on a tissue- poor bastard!! i was trying to get a consensus that it was not urine but possibly amniotic fluid.
we decided to continue with the day as normal and i would call our doctor when they opened at 8:30am. this i did and left a message with the receptionist. all morning at work i was in a bit of a distracted state (ha ha) tho luckily i have some interesting research to do at the moment so that was able to keep my mind off my 18 week old fetus for short stretches.
finally around 12 noon the receptionist called me back and asked if i could come in rather than just talk to the doctor on the 'phone. gee, what do you think? yes! my manager at work is a lovely woman and even offered to drive me to the doctors, she certainly wasn't bothered that i wanted to leave work early.

so, doc did an internal examination, asked me about my health and how the pregnancy had been going, felt my tummy and tried to find the baby's heart beat. she only has the tiniest hand-held heart beat findy thing tho, resulting in no success. Everything really has been peachy except for a fall i took last weekend, landing on my hand and hip more than anywhere else. her conclusion was that all was fine; the liquid was determined to be some mucous-y stuff. a swab was taken just for extra checking. after a couple of telephone calls she also got me into an ultrasound place that afternoon! all those people who have previously booked ultrasounds absolutely aeons in advance just to get in at the right time know what a miracle this is.

we had 45 minutes to get from erko to bondi junction, get parked and find the office, to make my 3pm appointment. and guess what? we did it! the ultrasound showed our little baby happy and healthy- phew. we spent nearly an hour looking him over. yes, him! a little brother for percy! it was really nice to get such an intimate look at bub and see his heart beating strongly, all measurements normal and my cervix firmly closed.

there have been no more contraction/ crampy feelings and no more fluid. we celebrated with take away dinner (because we were too drained to cook, plus percy likes pizza), and our chosen poisons of beer and icecream.

sydney museum

last sunday morning we made a family outing with sarah, chris, rose and tessa to the australia museum. after negotiating the steps at both erko and museum train stations with two stollers and four hot drinks we had a really lovely time. the older girls especially! they loved the dedicated play space and chasing each other around the dinosaur and australian animals exhibits. i'm not sure everyone else enjoyed seeing them tear around like maniacs and squealing at the top of their voices but watching percy calling out to "rosie-posie, where are you?" and running back and forth holding hands was just adorable.

wet weather

a couple of weeks back when it was raining non-stop percy delighted in her new welly boots and matching rain coat. she's grown out of her first set of welly boots. we hope this set lasts her a while yet.

"all gone"

it's been plagueing me for some time that i have failed to engage in any physical exercise for some time.

instead of walking up three flights of stairs without a care, i now feel my thighs protest after one! i remember when getting to work at least twice a week was an hour and half serious bike ride, one way. while i mightened have won any medals i had thighs we joked bullets would bounce off.
and what's this flabby, flobby stuff on the under side of my arm? my once-upon-a-time personal trainer said i had a stronger punch than many guys he knew (he was also a kickboxer pro.)
while i can still touch my toes with my legs straight my daily at home practice and once a week lesson of yoga is a distant memory. i fear many a pose is beyond my reach now.
how come my lungs burn after a slow jog, why does my heart pound just walking up a gentle slope?

the full extent of my exercise would be walking to the train and back, walking to local shops or parks a couple times a week and the very occasional ten minute bike ride.

what happened?
oh yeah, that's right- i had a baby. as she would say, all that fitness, flexibility, stamina and health is "all gone"; like an empty yoghurt tub.