Back by Popular Demand

It's been months since my last entry. I was talking to my gorgeous Den Haag uncle last week and he mentioned that he is missing reading my blog! I was quite delighted as I didn't think anyone actually read this blog.

So I'm going to try and write in here every so often.

What's happened to us since October? Well we left the NL, had a fantastic holiday in Switzerland visiting Aunt Liz & Meinrad and then carried on back to Australia via Singapore. It was a strange journey. I was stressed - I spent the journey either worrying that Adam was stressed and/or trying to keep Edward quiet on the plane. Edward was well behaved and great on the plane with the exception of the last 2 hours of each flight. With all the lights, noise, other passengers who (irritatingly) wanted to play with him, the poor child couldn't sleep much. And on each flight he got to a stage of extreme tiredness and I ended up holding him in my arms and walking up and down near the airplane loos trying to get him to stop crying. A bit of a challenge with my pregnant tummy.

By the time we arrived in Sydney I was too tired to feel emotional at seeing family / being home again. My goodness, Australians are friendly compared to Europeans. I have a new-found respect for Qantas, who took one look at us with over double our luggage allowance and booked it all through from Sydney to Canberra at no extra charge. We had a little reunion with Adam's parents at Sydney Airport (they had come down from Newcastle for the day) and then flew on to Canberra. I was so tired that I just felt numb when I saw my mother and sister Suzie again. My tiredness did not lift and after seeing the Australian obstetrician a few days later and having some blood tests it was discovered that I had (again) developed gestational diabetes & also had an iron count of 5 (she told me that she got worried when it goes below 25).

With hindsight I think I had had the diabetes since mid-September. The Dutch midwife assured me that whatever she measured in my urine on the fortnightly visits was fine, but the diabetes must have been hiding in there. So I was back on the blood sugar measuring and also taking 2 vitamins.

Anyway. My tummy measured 43 weeks by mid-December and I was the size of an elephant by early January. Thankfully I had an elective c-section. The c-section was an excellent experience. Hannah is a beautiful baby. I will post some photos.

I had the baby in a small private hospital. This meant that I had the same nurses day after day, which was nice. I really liked the night nurse - a plump lady who trotted around in comfortable exercise clothing (shorts and a T-shirt) and jogging shoes because as she told me, she gets too hot in her nurse's uniform. I staying in hospital for 5 nights. I could easily have gone home after 4 nights but hadn't finished reading a (third) novel and really enjoyed having a nice rest.

Hannah is an easier baby to look after than Edward was. My mother has told me that this is because I had no idea what to do to take care of Edward. She is probably right. When I look back on it, I think Edward was too cold for the first 6 months of his life, and (I am ashamed to write) hungry from when he was 13 months when I weaned him, until we arrived home in Australia.

I think by my mother's standards I could still probably do things better with both children, but I'm honestly doing the best I can and it will just have to be enough.
Both children and I am delighted when she comes to our house for a few hours. We have been very lucky for the last 2 weeks as she has had time to come each day. I love my mother. She is so intelligent, kind, but unflinchingly honest... this afternoon she went to get Edward's lunch from the fridge (I was breastfeeding Hannah) and she called out "Is THIS the pasta?". I said "Yes". There was a slight silence as she inspected the left-overs from the night before, and then she said "And does Edward actually EAT this thing?"

Hannah is now 8 weeks old and Edward is 23 months. Today Hannah had her first immunisation. Unsurprisingly she did not like it at all. With the first injection she went bright red in the face and starting screaming in fright. She screamed so much that the nurse actually got a bit nervous but I said to her "Quick, do the second one" as I thought it best just to get it over and done with. Poor little Hannah. It must be having some effect on her immune system because she has slept on and off all day, only waking for a brief feed/nappy change and then falling asleep again. It is now 10.10 at night and I'm hoping that she won't wake up in an hour or so and want to play.

Edward is an absolute darling. While I was in hospital my mother looked after him and she unlocked something in Edward and he suddenly started to put words together and say things. It's really lovely - he is such an innocent child. He wanders around the house chatting to himself and giggling at his own little jokes.
He is unfortunately fixated on tractors as for Xmas all the extended family (both sides) gave him some form of tractor or other vehicle - books, lego, plastic replicas etc etc. Some time this week I'm going to put all the vehicle things in a box in our spare room to give him a break from them. There are so many other lovely things to play with.

Well Hannah's still sleeping so I'm going to write a little bit about our house and then leave the rest for another day.

When we came home we lived in my mother's house for a month and then had a bit of luck as a rather run-down but large house in the next suburb came on the rental market. So we have signed a six-month lease and moved in during the Xmas-New Year period.

And it is so nice to be in this house after the cramped housing of the NL. Our sitting room is the size of the whole downstairs of the Eemnes house. And then there is also a separate dining room, an enormous but very 1950s kitchen, separate but old-fashioned laundry, study, three bedrooms, 2 toilets, one bathroom and a separate room for a shower. The master bedroom is so big that we could easily buy a second king sized bed and put it in there and still have plenty of space.

The garden is very large, hilly and is almost 100% lawn. It took Adam 3 hours to mow the back garden and he had to have a rest before he could tackle the front garden. That was before Xmas and he hasn't mown since. The grass is now up to my knees in places - quite exciting for Edward to run through but I'm a bit worried that a snake might be in there as we have a nature reserve directly behind the back fence. One of these days we will hire someone to cut the grass.