Gender Ambiguity

We have had a baby boy for five and a half years. Girls are few and far between on both sides of the family and despite the fact the there is no question that Charlotte is a girl. Vicky, myself, Vicky's parents and her aunts all keep calling her he and him. I'm sure we will get it right soon. Sorry Charlotte!

Five Days Old

Charlotte is five days old now and I am just starting to remember things from when chris was this age.

1. Babies are very small
2. They sleep A LOT at least Christopher did and Charlotte does
3. I think that babies smile from a very early age even if everyone else says its wind
4. A babies cry is the most efficent and effective way of getting atention in the world
5. They use a lot of nappies
6. They have no concept of night and day
7. If the baby wants to sleep there is very little you can do about it
8. If the baby is awake then it will be awake untill it wants to sleep
9. They use a lot of nappies
10. The arivals of a new Christopher and Charlotte are just about the most emotional experience I have ever had

The illusion of a routine

So its day three and we are getting back to normal. Charlotte is sleeping during the day and feeding at night which is a little less than considerate but hey, she has a very polite cry so we have to excuse her for now. She is feeding well and has so far done everything we could ask for.



We gave her her first bath last night which was a pleasant surprise. From memory Christopher screamed and screamed for his first bath. Charlotte on the other hand gave a short cry and then relaxed into the water very happily. I think we may well owe this to one of the Hurstville Midwives who told us to make sure that the bath was deep enough for her to float and to give her a face cloth to hold on to. She certainly seemed to appreciate the advice and we did too.

Charlotte.... 31st January 2007

Anyone for tennis???

I really can't say that I am all that much of a tennis fan but over the last few days I have really enjoyed watching the Australian open. I found it fairly amazing though that they schedule games that will run late into the night or even into early the following morning. It seems to be in absolute contrast to Wimbledon (the only other tennis tournament I have ever paid any attention to) .

Child stars and computers for kids....

Having just spent quite a lot of time looking at some of my friends Bloggs I have been struck by a case of child envy. I guess I'm not really being serious but the idea that Christopher could manage enough concentration to learn where any constellation is in the sky seems to be a long way off right now (or am I just transferring my own inability to learn where constellations are on to my son?). Obviously there are plenty of things he can do but spending the time to learn something like that is not very high on his list of priorities. Anyway the software that Andrew recommended on his post looks very cool and I think I'm going to download it and see if it may spark some interest in Christopher, maybe we can learn the constellations together?

Christopher has definitely shown an interest in to anything that involves a computer. The truth is that Christopher would happily sit in front of a screen of some description for as long as we would let him. We have bought a number of cheap educational games for Christopher to play on an old laptop and he just can't seem to get enough of it. It's a better use of this time than sonic the hedgehog and he seems to get just as much fun out of it. It has also prompted me to download the CD image for Edubuntu. I haven't actually installed it yet in fact I haven't even burnt it to a CD yet so that I could install it but the intention is there and I will get to doing it soon.

SixSigma for kids???

Sitting down in a coffee shop today Vicky suggested I spend the weekend teaching her and Christopher about SixSigma. I explained to Christopher that it is a way making difficult decisions, Chris just said "I'd rather just play rock paper scissors.

The workings of a child’s mind ...

As all parents probably know already, kids listen to everything, store it and throw it back at you when you least expect it. It tends to happen at just the wrong time, so as to cause people to look at the parent and ask themselves “what are you teaching that child?” .Well just recently Chris has come out with a cracker. Vicky and I think we have identified the various information/misinformation that has contributed to his humorous comments.
· Discussion on whether the baby will be born on time or late...
· The euphemistic phrases
o “she’s got a bun in the oven”
o “Not quite cooked” (relating to a friend’s baby that was born very premature)
The setup.... Christopher is asked do you think the new baby will have dark skin like your mum or white like your dad?
The response.... (Which was delivered in a superior tone suggestion that the question was fairly stupid) went like this....
“That depends on when it’s born!” when asked why the response came “If the baby is in mummy’s tummy for too long it will get burnt like in oven! The longer we leave it in the more brown it will be”
Not a bad piece of logic I think, and probably too early to go into genetics etc...

Number 2 is on the way

Well its a bit of a short post for a big thing but Vicky is pregnant and has now passed that all important 12 week stage. Christopher is very excited and we took him along for the first scan today! We went to a clinic the specialise in pregnancy scans, who had what I can only describe as some very cool gear (42" Plasma Display to watch the scan on). Any way suffice it to say that after the various measurements etc were taken the doctor was able to confirm that it is definitely a baby and all indicators point to a healthy one at that.