And Baby Makes Three

As K was born by C-section, C had to stay in hospital for three days after the birth. Each morning Rose and I drove into Lismore, and we helped C look after K during visiting hours, and ran errands in Lismore during the ward's "quiet time".

We organised an xmas lunch on the patio in front of C's hospital room. On Boxing Day we packed up our stuff and brought K home to Nimbin. She seemed to enjoy the car ride, which was a relief, and has so far settled very well to life at home. Obviously at this age she is not very interactive yet - but she takes notice of some of the wildlife and rainforest noises around her, and, though she can't focus her eyes yet, she definitely tracks things of interest using her head.

As K has not cried very much (only for food or nappies in the main) we have had time to finish off a few of the chores that got left as loose ends when we headed into Lismore for the birth. I shinned up the Jacaranda tree in our back garden and lopped off five or six large branches. I took out the in-window air conditioning unit which we had set up in the bedroom in readiness for C to labour at home. C and I moved the crib into our bedroom and surrounded it with mobiles and pictures (entirely unappreciated as yet, of course).

We also had a second xmas after we got home - polishing off the food C didn't eat when in hospital, opening the rest of the presents, and C having her first "post-tot" tot of Baileys after eight months of strict abstemiousness - K slept very well that night.

For much of the week we've been trapped indoors by heavy rain - being used to having the run of the garden, we're all getting cabin fever. Nonetheless, we have managed a quick walk in the Nightcap Ranges national park, where little K had her first alfresco nappy change. We have also made it out to the weekly Saturday market in Nimbin, and the monthly Sunday market too. At the Sunday market, C was able to relax with a hot chocolate at the chai tent, where K happily fell asleep in her lap to a local folk/harp trio.

The new baby lack-of-sleep thing isn't bothering me so far (especially as K has cried very little) but I expect that will change next week when I have my first 7:30am meeting.

Won't someone stop that evil man - not only is he blowing his carcinogenic cigar smoke into his baby daughter's face, but he's clearly drunk in charge, oblivious to the feral lizard just waiting to strike, and to top it all he's exposing his newborn's face to the antipodean sun.

New Person!

Our big news this week is that C is pregnant.
The new person is due to arrive in mid/late December, and she's a little girl. She doesn't have a name yet, but she does have a working title - Lil (as in "lil girl").
We said hello to her image on the scanner (darkly) last week, and she was pretty shy, but we still got a good look at her sleeping face before she hid from the camera completely. Figuring the dates, we're fairly sure she was made in New Zealand, during our trip to Bas and Jo's wedding on South Island.
Much of our time has been taken up getting ahead on the baby-kit. Four months out might seem a bit early to be buying a cot, a car-restraint, and a jogger - but the price and choice we've got in Brisbane is many times better than around Nimbin, so we should save ourselves hassle by stocking up on all the essentials right now, during our remaining few weeks in the city.
We drove down to Nimbin for the weekend, partly to deliver some of the bulkier items home before we had more than would fit in our little Barina, and partly because we were starting to really miss the place... And now I'm back in the city I'm suddenly very sad that I'm not down there to stay for another 2 months or so, and suddenly aware of all the ways city life compresses and distorts my priorities and personality.
C's job is plodding on, both my jobs are plodding on, and I'm still appreciating the extra time at home and away from the psychologically toxic office environment - it's making me more anti-social, but also saner. As C put it - now we've seen outside of the rat-race, we're very keen to get out as far as possible.
I had a strange working-from-home moment today. I lit the gas stove-top to make myself some rice for lunch. I was wearing a cotton/nylon jumper. As I lit the stove, the flame jumped inexplicably, about 50cm to my chest, and the front of my jumper was suddenly on fire. It was not hot - a cool, yellowish flame, standing in the air about 1cm above the surface of the jumper. I stepped back, well away from the stove, and tried to smother the flames with my arms - with the result that the flames jumped onto the arms of my jumper, which gave me a better view of them - small, yellow, not very hot. It's hard to smother your arms with any other part of the body, so I took the jumper off and sat on it. After a moment the flames went out, and I examined the jumper - not a mark on it, and seemingly good as new, though it did make a crackling, static-electricity type noise as I took it off. I googled for the phenomenon and came up with nothing.