A BIG Thank You!

THANK YOU for the confinement food and gifts and most importantly your prayers!

Ben @ 5 Days Old

That's him . . . my new bundle of joy!

Josh is such a boy

who can fall asleep in the strangest of locations?

The Day After

We had visitors over and there was a baby craddling session for all kids. Friends from church brought much cheer, chicken soup, flowers, company and good humour in the face of adversity haha.

Josh seems to have matured overnight - perhaps it's just that i didn't realise how big he's grown till there was a real baby to compare with. Nevertheless, he seems more independent and forgiving than I expected, hardly fighting with baby Ben over mama. I'm impressed.

Most interestingly, Anna and Josh seems to have deepened their friendship when Ben came - i think they now have even more in common. Absolutely intriguing.

The hospital staff were great - allowing Anna and Josh in the suite when Cindy was in hard at work, entertaining them, making them feel welcomed and explaining facts-of-life things to Anna etc. They were really warm - all this in a public hospital.

Amazingly, Ben exited without any episiotomy or tears. There was minimal bleeding and a friend said that i looked more like the one who delivered the baby. Cindy is radiant and moving around like nothing much happened.

Stork Dropped Its Parcel - Ben arrives

Ben arrived at about 7pm Friday. Anna and Josh were present and enjoyed the party haha. Shu, thanks for the DVD player that continues to entertain our kids.

Anna became attached to Ben from the first and cried her way home when we had to leave Cin and Ben in the hospital.

Josh too appeared to be extremely understanding - perhaps not knowing that he's lost his baby status for good!

Ben weighed 2.77kg - in between Anna and Josh's birth weights and seems to have a cry of volume between that of Anna's and Josh's too.

Thank God. Both mother and baby are healthy. It was the most difficult labour for Cindy. She said she's had enough!

38 Weeks Exactly

We are all up and about at 430am. Thanks to me. . . for I having been experiencing contractions of 10min intervals. But once the kids are up and I have to attend to them, I somehow ignore the pains and the contractions seems to be going away. Called the Labour Ward, spoke to the midwife, she said to stay home for the next hour till contractions get to 5min intervals. It seems not to be happening at the moment, since I can sit here almost comfortably to update the blog!

Well, well, will we see baby today?

37(+3) Weeks

Its Spring! Still no sight of baby, but with a couple of contractions (I think that's how it feels) each day, for the pass few days.

One moment I hope the baby will pop soon. On the other hand, I am apprehensive. How to bring 2 kids to the hospital while I try to pop??? Frank would be very 'busy'!

Hospital bag is almost packed, car seat washed, this time round, I even got my hands on a baby capsule. Baby cot is also set up, at the moment it is a playground for Josh and Anna.

Just a note:

Anna popped at 38 weeks exactly.

Josh popped at 37(+6) weeks.

Some pics from Father's Day Morning Tea

After showing all the gifts for Papa, Anna took off to the playground. As usual, she played with Lauren and Samantha. They are just as good friends despite the fact that she is not in the same class as them.

Its a joy to see their friendship growing.

Life After The Move

Although Spring is here, these 2 weeks have been rainy and we had one failed attempt at lantern festival at King's Park. Still waiting for good weather for some traditional Chinese fun.

Anna's taking some great pics for us these days - she really has quite an eye for framing nice pics.

After our move (previous landlord wanted to sell his house), we found that the surrounding hills are good family fun - josh, in our carrier and anna sometimes leading the way.

Cin is now 37 weeks and still climbing haha - just like she did with Josh in the tummy when David, Susan and Sarah came over (we climbed a hill at Bunbury).

Now that it is warmer, Anna and Josh sometimes have some icy-treats in the shower. Hopefully it will warm up soon - then we can use the little pool downstairs.

36(+5) Weeks

Its been almost 8.5 months and we are almost seeing the end of this journey. This bump of mine will soon be ripened. I should be glad to see baby soon. Perhaps I can sleep in a more comfortable position from then on, no more indigestion and painful pelvic joints.

But Frank is NOT ready! HA! HOW??

Father's Day in Australia (WA?)

Father's Day in Australia is on this Sunday and I was invited to Anna's school this morning for some tea. There was a live band made up of a teacher-saxonphonist, a student vocalist and other musicians and there were muffins and hot drinks that went around.

What was most interesting to me were the gifts from Anna which she made in school - especially that card - have a look at the first line and see if you spot something funny haha! There was also a lovely apron and a medal with french words undecipherable to me!

BBQ with Papa's classmates

We were back at Point Walter yesterday for a late afternoon BBQ. Lots of food. I cooked laksa and baked a tapioca kueh. The kids had fun playing in the sand. One of Frank's classmate brough her niece and she joined in. Anna and Josh had a lovely time with her. They were running up and down the jetty, quite scary when they go near the edge to look into the water. They played so hard that at the end, both A & J were complaining they were hungry. We went for pasta-take-out - they finished all the food!

Gym Class

Every Wednesday for the past term, we have been bringing Anna for her Gymnatics class at Leederville. Its an hour class. This was lesson no. 7 and she has been learning to do forward and back-rolls, balancing on the many apparatus (some which I do not know the names), etc etc. Last 2 lessons she has been talking about the difficulty in doing somersaults on the high bar. After every lesson, she would be exhausted and always will have tummy and legs ache. I think the sessions require her to use many groups of muscles that she seldoms use. Well, good for her then!

While Anna attends her class, Josh and I with/without Frank at times, would be hanging around the gym hall, having an afternoon snack. We will also go to the library to get some books, DVDs and puzzles.

BTW, Josh has been into reading. Favourites at the moment are this big counting book and 'Goodnight Moon'.

Isn't he a bit young?

Few days ago, Josh saw something interesting (a baby's clip) on the internet and since then, he has been asking to watch it everyday. He watched over and over and over again.

Good times

Some days they are so good with each other and other days, they can be pulling each other's hair, more likely its Josh pulling Anna's!

Josh just turned 20 months and he has quite a playful character. Frank has a pair of trackpants that has buttons on them, and Josh will always try to unbutton them. Recently, he is into Hi-5 music, asking me to play the CD 2-3x a day so that he can dance to the music, very funny to watch him! Also, his vocabulary has increased recently, he tries to imitate words that are used by us esp. Anna.

Ballet Production

On the 23 August, Anna was involved in a ballet production entitled 'La Fille Mal Gardee (The Girl Runs Wild). Well, the little ones danced in the second Act as beautiful butterflies! The pics were taken prior to the performance with hair-do and make-up done by me (one who does not have any blusher nor lip-stick, I had to buy them! Can you imagine!). Anyway, she had loads of fun in the production, the ballet teacher has trained them well. It was an amazing effort on her part!