Monday, April 26, 2010

Swimming is Fun!

This week (or shall I say last week) Oliver had his very first swimming lesson! We have been in the pool with him a few times, and he has always enjoyed it, or not cried, but I really wanted to start swimming lessons early as I love the pool myself and think it would be great if our kids knew to swim well. Especially now as we are looking for a new house and I am dreaming (well hopefully not) that we will be able to get a house with a pool.

Oliver's swimming lessons are only 30 minutes long and are done in the hydrotherapy pool, which is great considering the cold weather we are getting and it's only going to get colder now. They involve a lot of singing of nursery rhymes and just generally getting them used to the water, showing them how to kick and how to go under the water. It was so much fun and the half an hour went way too quickly. After the swimming lesson we are allowed to use our swim school pass to get into the big pool for a longer swim if we like, which is very nice, although I am not too sure how Oliver would like it being taken from the beautiful warm hydrotherapy into the slightly cooler (bit still warmed) big pool. I didn't get the chance to do so last week, but am hoping to be able to this week.

A big thanks to Kelly, Anthony and Jaden this week for passing on Jaden's jolly jumper to us. Not only is it the most wonderful thing to see him jumping around and having the time of his life, but it also frees up Mummy's hands for a little while. Oliver had recently gotten bored of his play mat, which meant he just wanted to be held constantly, but now he loves jumping away and lets me either sit down for a while or do some jobs that were in desperate need. OLIVER LOVES THE JOLLY JUMPER!

Not much else happening in Oliver news. Well I am sure there is but I am struggling to remember what has gone on within the past week. This coming week we have a big week, with Oliver's 6 month birthday on Wednesday, which unfortunately also means his 6 month immunisations, yuck, and on Sunday we are getting so professional photos taken of him and ourselves to celebrate him turning 6 months.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Oliver's First Easter

Ok so this is late again. But I am a Mum and what better excuse I say?

Well Oliver's first Easter has come and gone, and like every event since Oliver has been in the world it was a beautiful day filled with lots of love from all the family and friends. And wasn't he
spoilt! This little guy has sooooo much stuff, we need a new house just to store all his stuff. Even though he can't eat chocolate just yet he got loads of Easter presents and those chocolates that he did get Mummy ate for him. Don't worry, I explained to him just how good each one tasted, so in a way he still got to enjoy them.

We spent the day eating of course, we had lunch at Craig's parents house and then a dinner
at my Brother and Sister in Laws house, but of course being surrounded by so many people all day wore little Oliver out and he was none too impressed by the time 4.30pm came around and was a little sooky for the latter half of the day, eventually falling asleep on me early and even picking him up and holding him the air couldn't wake him from the deep slumber he found himself in. So cute. I can't say I mind though, since having him on the routine (and it's been a long time now) I don't have that little luxury of having him fall asleep on my chest, one of my favourite things ever, as he has to be put down awake in his bed so he can self settle. But it's that little sacrifice I have to make so that he will sleep well.

Anyway, as I said the day was beautiful, and Oliver even got a chance to show off his sitting skills to everyone at the Petta household, and we got some beautiful smiley photos of him as well.

Speaking of sleeping. We have had a breakthrough. Since his little sickness he has been a horrible night sleeper, waking up 6-7 times per night. Wow that is tough on a working Daddy and a Mummy who does some part time work from home. But I have decided to cut out his 10.30pm dreamfeed and I am happy to say that I put him down at 7pm for his sleep and he wakes up once a night for a feed, usually between 3.30am and 6.00am, which means I can feed him and put him back down and he will go back to sleep until 7.00am. So now Daddy and Mummy are happy because we are getting so much more sleep and are very refreshed every day.

Well until next time that is all.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Growing So Fast!



A lot of people have made comments to me about how I hadn't updated my blog. Sorry, I have been meaning to, I have just been so very busy this past couple of weeks. Every day I think I should come on here and write about what has been going on, and every day something comes up, or I'm so exhausted I can't even speak properly, let alone write :O). So anyway, here it is.

The last 2 weeks have been very busy, and Oliver has learnt and grown so much. Oliver is now 5 months old and so interactive with us. He is getting cheekier by the day, and we think that we are going to have a little boy who likes to push the boundaries when he is older.
We have had a lot of firsts in the past two weeks...

Oliver learns to sit up
One day I was changing Oliver's nappy on his change table, afterwards I like to put him up and he usually pushes up on his feet as he just LOVES standing up, but on this day he sat up and didn't pu
sh to his feet. I noticed he was looking quite strong and steady where he was so let go (don't worry my hands were close by in case he fell) and he just kept on sitting. I couldn't believe it, my little guy was sitting up, just like tha
t, and he looked so comfortable doing it. So of course, I had to get it on video. So I took him and our video camera to our bed and sat him up. The first time was only like 3 seconds, then 5 seconds, then 15 seconds. I was a proud Mummy. So everyday I sit him up and let him practice his sitting up. Today, he sat up for over a minute without falling. He is just growing up too fast, but I am loving every single minute of it. I can't wait for him to be running around. I dream of the day that Craig and I can take him to the park and run around with him, it's going to be so much fun. OK so I am getting a little ahead of myself, he isn't even crawling yet, but its going to be great.

Speaking of crawling, the first step to that is to get him comfortable on his stomach. Well most days he is quite good on his stomach and I have noticed him pushing his knees into the floor every now and then and the little bum going into the air. However saying this, I think Oliver is going to be like his Daddy and walk before he crawls. He just loves to be
on his feet.

Oliver gets his first illness *sob sob*
Our poor little dude got his first illness. He started out with a croaky voice. OK before you say "how did you know he has a croaky voice he doesn't speak yet?", he does speak, just doesn't know the words haha. Anyway I noticed that his voice was a lot more croakier than normal, but though he seemed fine so I left it for a while. And then he got the most pathetic little cough, and it was heart breaking, and then he got cranky and I could hear him wheezing a little. Of course he decided to fall sick at a very inconvenient time. Perth got hit by quite a big storm. We had big golf ball sized hail, crazy strong winds that were blowing down trees everywhere, flash flooding, thunder and lightening that was coming down every couple of seconds and all of this caused our power to go out for 36 hours. So, even though we have a gas hot water system, and a gas stove we still need electricity to get it all started, which means no hot water and it's very difficult to cook without the oven. I have learnt that having a baby without electricity is
very hard. So with our little man not being well we did not want to chance it having him sleep without his monitor. I just could not sleep knowing that the sensor pads weren't working. They have a back up battery which charges whilst the power is on, but I had not idea how long it would last. So we took a trip to Dad and Mum's house and stayed there for 2 nights whilst we were without power. Oliver did not sleep well with his little cold. He woke up several times during the night needing settling, with me having to sleep with him until he fell asleep one night and then putting him in the cot and having to sleep in his room anyway. Thankfully Mum and Dad have a great nursery in their house which includes a single bed that I could sleep on. The next day I rang and rang and rang the doctor trying to get him in for an appointment, but they were also out of power, meaning the phones weren't working, so eventually I bundled him into the car and thought I would go to the doctor and make the booking there. They told me they would see him straight away which was nice. So I explained to the doctor how I thought he was sick because he was all croaky in his voice and had a cough and was just generally
unsettled, then Oliver looks up at the Doctor and gives her one MASSIVE smile and giggle, trying to make Mummy look stupid. The doctor says to me "I think he's trying to tell me he is fine" then turns to Oliver and says "Is your Mum a first time Mummy worrying about nothing?" haha I know I wasn't worrying about nothing. She checked him out and yes, this first time Mummy was right! He had a congested throat and a fever. Unfortunately not much you can do about when they are this young, but with some baby panadol, a vapouriser and loads of cuddles from Daddy, Mummy and Grandparents he became well again very soon.

Oliver has started solids
And I can tell you he LOVES his apples. At first he wasn't too sure about it all. He looked at me like, "why are you sticking this hard thing into my mouth?" Oliver is now eating, Baby Cereal, Carrot and Apple and is starting pear tomorrow. I am sure he will love the pear as he gobbles down his apple, I think he will take after his Mum in the food department and be a sucker for sweets. Most people know that I am definitely not the cook in the family. Craig takes pride of place in the kitchen, but I think I have found my calling... Pureed foods, I am successful at cooking these every time! :O)

Oliver is 5 months Old!
Oh my gosh! Hasn't time flown by. I love looking back at all his photos and seeing how much Oliver has grown. For me I obviously don't notice it that much as I am with him 24/7. People are always saying "wow he's grown since I last saw him" (which by the way is usually only a couple of days) and I think "little exaggeration don't you think" hahahaha, but then I look back at his photos and I am astounded by how much he really has grown. He was so teeny tiny when he was born and now he is so much bigger. Anyway, with each month I get Oliver weighed and the following is his statistics:

Weight: 7.4 kilos (50th percentile) wow only put on .3 or a kilo, he really is slowing down on the weight gain, he used to be 70th percentile.
Height: 66.5 centimeters (75th percentile) he's getting taller, use to be 50th percentile here! The nurse said to me "I'm pretty sure that he's going to be taller than his Mummy and Daddy" to which I had to reminder her it wasn't ever going to be hard seeing as we are both small.

Anyway that is it mostly, a bit long this time around, but I promise to be better at my updates.