Christmas Pics

Posing , a few weeks after the operation

Getting ready for a swim at Anne & Jason's ... first time in a pool in about 10 months!
Swimming with Mummy


At the Cathedral for their children's service, Christmas Eve afternoon
Unwrapping pressies Christmas Eve with Gramps and Gran Lylia
Getting tired ... Christmas Eve
Christmas Morning ... unwrapping pressies with Mummy
and with Daddy!
Woohoo! First wheels!
Look what Daddy made me on Boxing Day - a cubby!

Walking, walking, walking

Matilda is now mostly walking everywhere. Now and then when faced with an obstruction, she'll either walk over it or resort to crawling. She can go faster if she holds one of our hands, and still enjoys doing that. Except when we're trying to steer her in a direction she doesn't want to follow ...
Yesterday, we noticed that we could tell M was getting tired, not by her eye rubbing, but by the number of times she was falling onto her bum. Thanks goodness for whatever padding a nappy provides!
We've put up the Christmas tree, and decorated it, and put up M's Nativity scene and Santa's sled. At the moment, he greatest joy comes in pulling them apart, and chucking everything on the floor (it's all Little People stuff, and suitable for a 1 year old!!!). I'm trying to instill some meaning into her, but between her attention span and the back of my head saying "baby cheeses" thanks to Kath and Kim, we'll see if any of it sticks. And singing Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer! It is rather odd in this sweltering summer heat to be singing to my child about dashing through the snow ...
Matilda isn't able to get at the tree, thanks to a play pen I bought from someone at work. She can reach some of the branches and ornaments, but we're clearing them as much as we can. So far, turning on the lights at night haven't elicited much of a response.

Photos (all pre-op)

If I tried, I'm sure I could look cuter!
Trucks and books, what more could a girl want?
Wattle plant ... in New Orleans!!
Helping Mummy unpack

End of November ...

It's been two weeks since Matilda's surgery, and she's doing very well. We see the surgeon for a follow-up appointment tomorrow, and we're hoping that will mean ... no more eye drops. It's taken almost two weeks, but Matilda's just realised in the last day or so that if she thrashes around while we're trying to hold her down, the eye drops end up on her face or Daddy's fingers, rather than in her eyes. Little Monkey.
We also discovered just what a party animal she's going to become last Sat night at a wine and cheese (and election results) party with friends. M stayed up until about 9:30pm ... 2 1/2 hours past her usual bedtime!!! As the night wore on, she walked more and more ... oh, and there's some other news, since last Wednesday, M has been walking more and more. She started with a metre or so, and now she can pretty much cross rooms with something in her hand, no worries at all. At about 9:30 she finally hit the wall, and went to bed fairly well without too much objection, and didn't stir much when we left L & R's house. She woke when we were almost home, and it took a lot of cuddles to get her back to sleep. M and I ended up sleeping on the couch for 30 mins or so until she was really asleep. It's certainly much harder to sleep on the couch with a toddler lying on me than it used to be with a newborn all wrapped up in my arms!!
The good news was that M slept in until 8:30am on Sunday ... bliss!

Surgery update

Matilda had her three muscle bilateral squint surgery this morning at the Queensland Eye Hospital. It went quite well, we managed with the no foods after 3am (woke her up and gave her a bottle at 2:30am, lucky Mummy!), and the no water/juice after 7am. M was getting grizzly at home, probably due to the breakfast routine being interrupted, but picked up when we arrived at the hospital (it does day surgery procedures only) when she had new places to investigate. She also behaved in her usual completely shy manner (not) and sat on a complete stranger's lap to watch her portable DVD player with her son!
Waiting for the surgery was not fun, but a bit after 9am I went through with her to the theatre (only one of us could go in) and stayed til she was asleep from the gas. That took a minute of not much happiness, and then John and I spent the next 1 1/2 -2 hours waiting outside ...
At about 11, we were called into recovery and spent the next while with her, giving her oxygen, cuddles, dummy, and a bit of food. M fell asleep on me in the kids recovery room, and we stayed there til almost 1pm I guess. Then we came home, had some lunch, and M had a BIG afternoon sleep. She's playing now, and we'll be getting into the usual dinner routine soon.
Matilda's eyes are red, as we were told, but they've been getting redder as the time passes. She's got two sets of eye drops to be taken 4 times a day for the next two weeks, and her pain/discomfort should be able to be managed by panadol and nurofen. If all goes well tonight, we won't see the opthamologist again for two weeks ... so we'll see what he says about her response to the surgery then!

I'm 1 now

Matilda is now one ... and I've almost started her first album! :P
We had a little party, with just some family and godparents. Not all of the people who love and care for Matilda, but we thought we'd keep this year relatively quiet, given M doesn't yet understand what a birthday means. She had a great time, and a big sleep right in the middle, which rather mucked up our plans for the cake - it was meant to be morning tea, not post-lunch ... oh well!
M is doing well, crawling really well, although this week it's with her left knee and right foot on the ground, if you can imagine that. M and her Dad had the weekend alone this past weekend, and all went swimmingly well, so it seems they'll cope when I'm in the US for work for 16 days. But I know we'll all miss one another.

Photos .. finally!

Eating cake, on the actual birthday

Birthday cake

Eating Birthday cake ..

Mum let me feed myself Avocado again ..

Happy Father's DAy - and I choose Daddy over chocolate!

See, I can crawl up on my knees now!

Trying icing ... M acted as though we were trying to feed her poison

Opening pressies, how spoilt

Eyes update

We saw the opthamologist yesterday. Matilda's surgery will be on Weds Nov 14. Three of the four horizontal muscles around her eyes will be cut and either loosened or tightened. This will hopefully get her closer to using both eyes together, rather than independently. It's day surgery, and if there are no complications, she should be back at daycare, etc, the following Monday.
We also discovered that M will never be able to be a commercial or fighter pilot (commerical and military aviation industries are out), or an opthamologist, as even with the surgeries, she will not develop stereopsis (true depth perception). We're not too concerned about that at this stage, but apparently she won't ever have proper depth perception.
Until the surgery, we need to keep up the patching to keep her eyes even, but now alternating between the two eyes, and for just one hour a day. The girls at daycare are awesome with her patches now ... I just need to work on being so good about them during home days ...

New photos

Playing with the Mardi Gras beads

Yum, avocado face mask

But if I can reach it, I can touch it, right??

Favourite toys and Fathers Day

Some of Matilda's favourite toys at the moment boggle our minds ... the bottom part of a plastic chinese takeaway container can keep M entertained longer than a Lamaze toy ... an empty tissue box (well, she'd love a full tissue box even more, but that's just TOO messy) ... the recycling crate with old paper and plastic bottles in it ...
John had a pretty good first Fathers day - my hopes of letting him sleep in were dashed when M got super grizzly during brekky. After some medicine and a few cuddles, M perked up and then had a BIG sleep (2 hours) that morning. After her sleep, we took her Daddy to Wagamama for lunch. Yummy. :) Dinner was at bro Cam's place - he cooked Roast Lamb for us all. Cuddles all round, and a lovely fam dinner with Cam's flatmates, too. M loved exploring all over the apartment, and finding out just how un-baby-proof a bachelor pad is ... ;)

No more photos for a bit

I won't be able to post any photos of M for a bit. :(
I need a new PC. This one has less than 2GB of disk space left. Yes, I know you don't have to get a new PC when the disk space runs out, but this on is getting a bit old and clunky. More RAM and other such things are needed, as well as more disk space (to cope with the 10megapixel camera which produces photos that are at least 3MB each).

Not about Matilda

Just thought I'd let everyone know, I now have my very own Creative Memories website - mycmsite.com.au/ktaylor. You can browse the full range of Creative Memories products, check out my upcoming events, and even order products. So cool.
On an album related note, I will be FINALLY starting M's album soon. We have so many photos, got to start putting them somewhere other than the hard drive and photo sorting box. :) I've just got to finish working on Grandad Moore's album ... then it'll be all about Matilda.

Feeling a bit better

M's starting to feel better now. We're well under way with the Amoxil doses, and have scaled back the Panadol. If necessary, there's a bit of Dimetapp around bedtime, to help dry up the nose (otherwise if she wakes during the night, you can find her headl lying in a damp spot, poor thing - must be horrid when you can't blow your nose). No waking up last night through the night ... we'll see how tonight goes. I've got a cold now, so not keen on spending too much time awake in the middle of the night.

Over the weekend, I was at the annual CM consultant conference. There was lots of great training, inspiring speakers, AWESOME product launches, and a sneak peek of a future digital product ...
Hopefully within the next few days, I'll be able to add a link to my very own CM website. So cool. At the Gala Dinner on Sat night, I ran into my brother Cam and sister Peta. They were at a Thiess fundraiser in the room next door! Who'da thunk it?

Tomorrow's People's day at the Ekka. We haven't seriously thought about taking M to the Ekka, but ever since I said to John "you aren't going to the Ekka, are you?", he's wanted to go. Unlikely to happen at this stage. Hopefully we'll hold out for another year or two ... or if we don't, we'll only be looking at animals and the like, no rides or bags! I'm so harsh. ;)

Waving Bye Bye

Matilda has started waving Bye Bye in the past couple of days. I first saw her do it when she was strapped onto my front in the Baby Bjorn as we were leaving daycare. How cute!
Also at daycare this week, the "big" kids (I'm talking the 2 year olds) were so happy to see M. They exclaimed "It's Baby Matilda!" when she arrived, and one day one little girl came up and gave M a hug, and then everyone else followed suit. How cute. :)

We had to bring M home early today - a temp of 38.8. She started getting hot last night, and gets better with doses of Panadol. We took her to the GP this arvo, she has a middle ear infection (again), but he doesn't think that's the cause of the temp. Might be in for a few rough nights ... we'll see .. fingers crossed for good sleep for M and her parents!

Feeding

I'll try not to get too TMI. ;)
M has dropped down from three BFs to two a day (and two bottles of formula during the day time). We dropped the "dreamfeed" in the last week or so, as we'd worked it forwards from 11pm to 8:30pm, and we figured M would cope without it. She really wasn't drinking much at all, and barely waking up for it. So she still has a BF after waking up in the morning and before going to bed at night. But lately ... anything distracts her! If JR is walking around, if the TV's on, if there's air in the room .... anything, and she's moving around, chatting, stretching, trying to climb on the couch, grab the TV remote, anything she can to move around. The big, wide world is SOOO interesting. So I'm not too sure if this is a hint that she wants to wean or not. She still drinks OK, in between the very occasional bite (ouch!). I've been hoping to get M through winter with at least some breast milk every day, but it seems she might have other ideas ... we'll see how it all goes.

Drinking Water, standing up, being cheeky

Matilda is getting very good at drinking her water, all of a sudden. I hadn't been able to figure out why on her daily "report cards" from daycare, there would be comments that M had drunk water. One day I popped in at unch time, as M had also been rather picky about her lunch eating ... I noticed that the carers put her cup on the highchair table while she's eating. So I've been doing that since, and M actually drinks a fair bit of water, but only on her terms. ;) And sometimes the cup is really a missile to be propelled to the far corners of the room (ok, I'm exaggerating), but generally, she's pretty good about drinking it.
For people who've been to our house recently, you can now slump on the couch and still see the TV. The piles of mags have been moved ... now that M is pulling herself up onto the coffee table, she's been enjoying pulling everything off it ... so we've minimised what's there, and are trying to help her exercise restraint ... let's see how that works.

Doctor's appointment

We saw the opthamologist on Thursday. M's right eye is getting better, but we still need to keep patching. The doctor is keen to operate as soon as M is using her eyes evenly to see. If we have to, we're going to put something like Elastoplast over M's patch to try to keep it on. Hopefully as her right eye gets stronger (again), M will protest less about the patch ... fingers crossed!

Seriously pulling up now

As I picked M up from childcare today, her carer stopped me to tell me what another beautiful day it was with M, and how much she loved playing outside and even pulled herself up to STANDING on the frame outside. Goodness me! It's still unfortunate timing, what with winter weather and our polished wood floors ... but I guess M'll figure out a way around it, or get lots of bumps!
M is also babbling happily, lots of bababababab, dadadaad, wawawwaawawa, and some mamamama. None of it's really aimed at anyone or intentional, so the linguist in me doesn't want to call it speech yet ... it's still babble.
The patching is not working very well. We're finding it impossible to keep a patch on for more than a few minutes, M just rips it off. Little tricker. At least we generally catch her before it's in her mouth ... We see the opthamologist on Thursday; hopefully he'll have some ideas of what to do to keep the patch on ...

June-July Photos

Cuddles with Unca Cam

Happy Birthday Gramps!

Got Milk?

Helping with the recycling ...

Rugged up on a cold Sat to go to the Farmer's Markets

Trying to stand?

Matilda is trying to stand. So far, our polished wood floors are getting the best of her. John is also joking that we're spraying oil on the floor to make sure she keeps crawling ... ;)
There's not a great deal of furniture for M to pull herself up onto. She tries to pull up on the recylcing crate, and also the footrest for the highchair, but everything else so far is just a bit high, particularly given that she's still commando crawling, rather than up on her hands and knees. It will be interesting to see how quickly she progresses ...

Teeth

Matilda now has five teeth, very much proof that they don't "erupt" in pairs all the time! Two on the top and three on the bottom. I'm still feeding her first thing in the morning and before bed at night (bottles during the day), but that might change if she starts biting hard. :( Generally I'm able to discourage her from biting pretty quickly, and I remind her to be gentle with Mummy.
We had dinner tonight at Punjabi Palace at West End with Rhonda from WA. It's odd - normally Rhonda and I get to see each other in the states, rarely do we get to catch up in Aus! But she might be coming over to Brisvegas a bit for work, yay! Matilda joined in, and for about the first time ever, finished a jar of store-bought savoury food. Heinz Organic Chicken and Sweet Potato. Generally she turns her nose up at the store-bought savoury food, but loves the sweet stuff. She also devoured a jar of fruit and really got stuck into a rusk with her teeth. She loved being in the restaurant with all the people and noise - maybe Miss M is more of an extrovert than her parents are! :)

Sitting to crawling; food

M is starting to master the art of moving from sitting to crawling. Until last week, she could only go from sitting to crawling by falling backwards, rolling onto her tummy, and then starting to commando crawl. Now she can fold herself forwards, move her legs out from underneath herself and start crawling away. Yay!
M's being pretty good about the variety of food that she'll eat, but she's not keen on lumpy stuff yet. I'm not sure if I'm being impatient and haven't moved to lumpier food slowly enough or if M would just prefer to suck down food and not have to chew on it. Her top front teeth have cut through, so she's now got five teeth (well, ok, little bits of teeth in some cases) to chew with ...
She is eating vegemite toast quite happily, in small enough pieces. She really doesn't like bought food, and I think we need to start making some more interesting food to eat. And I need to not forget when we put aside leftover food to be mashed up for her ...

Welcome back J & J

On Sunday we went to visit James and Janet in their new house - yay! Welcome back to the sunshine state after what ... 8 or 9 years down south! Can't wait to visit in summer and have swims. :)

Great-Grandad Moore

M's great-grandad Moore passed away last Monday morning, 2nd July after being sick for a long time (9 years since his first stroke). M and I spent the day with her MorMor, Great-Grandma Moore and Great-Uncle Harry, to cheer them all up, especially Great-Grandma. The rest of our week was normal, and GG's funeral was on Friday afternoon at Corpus Christi at Nundah. The priest from that parish, Fr John, has been visiting GG in his nursing home for years, so the family decided that would be an appropriate place for the mass. M was really good through the service, apart from wanting to add to her Great-Uncle Ian's eulogy with her own ... we quickly plugged her up with a dummy, as we were hoping she might doze off. M dozed off in the car on the way to the cemetary and slept through the internment. At the end of the day, we had some drinks and nibblies at a function room at the retirement complex Great-Grandma is living in. Lots of family, but only about two people told me that they hadn't "see you since you were *this* high". ;) M behaved really well, had lots of cuddles, and a bit of crawling time in a corner out of the way of adult feet.

Opthamologist today

We took M to see Dr Forrest today. We now have to patch her other eye (formerly known as her "bad" eye) because her former "good" eye is now not working as well. M is actually preferring her "bad" eye. The doctor hasn't seen a patient switch eye like this in the past four to five years.
He also doesn't seem to have so many other patients who pull off and try to eat their patches ... M did that again on Monday.
So we're going to be patching her left eye for the next month, and we'll see doctor again at the end of July. If her eyes are even at that point, it looks like we'll have to act quickly with her surgery before her eyes potentially swap over again ... it's all rather interesting, as I thought her right eye was not responding in the best possible way to patching!

Back at work

I started back at work this week. I'm working three days a week for now, and we'll see how that goes for the next month or so. My role is really a full-time role, and my boss and I need to see how it goes being part-time, and I need to see how I cope with everything and work. What a journey! I don't know how women in the US go back to work so quickly (mat leave is typically three months over there, so you stay at work til you pop!). M was still barely sleeping at three months ...
I think any Mum has a tough, full-on, 25-hour-a-day job, but those Mums who combine working out of the home with working in the home are to be admired!

Great-Grandad Moore

We had a bit of a scare with M's Great-Grandad Moore (my Grandad). He was taken from his nursing home to hospital at 11:30 last night with poor breathing. They think he's got pneumonia. The doctor's thought he wouldn't last the night. MorMor, Great-Grandma and I spent the morning in the Emergency with Grandad, and contrary to the doctor's predictions, he's survived. He was taken back to the nursing home at around midday. He is so strong, and we've had so many scares where doctors have thought that he's at death's door in the past few years. So far, he keeps proving them wrong.
I hope he knows he has a Great-Granddaughter.

Sick girl

So M has had a cold on and off since starting daycare. We knew it would be this way, and it seems that getting sick when around other kids is inevitable - even if one of us stayed at home with M til she starts school, we'd be going through all this with a 5 year old in grade one. Since Sunday, her cold's been rather yucky, and M has been having some cough syrup. This was perfect timing for her first babysitting session with Gramps and Gran Lylia. Until Wednesday night, the odd bit of Demazin, as required, seemed to be doing the trick (and a visit to the GP in between to make sure that it wasn't anything more serious). Wednesday night we had a very upset little girl waking up every hour or so. I was feeling so happy to be back at work ... not! The last few nights have been rather horrid, and typically involved an hour or so of trying to convince M that she wants to sleep in her bed from about 3am til 4am. It's such a shock to get some yucky sleep happening, after having good sleep for a while!
M's been rather upset this afternoon, so we called a Doctor out for a home visit. The inside of one ear is looking red and bulging (I think he said Titus something) and he's prescribed antibiotics for the next week. Poor little chook. It must be so hard to have pain and occasional fever and just not be able to do anything more about it than cry and want cuddles from Mummy and Daddy.

Driving Distractions

Yesterday, we went for a wee drive before lunch. There was a house in Wooloowin I wanted to drive past that I'd seen online (not that we're even seriously looking for a new house yet, but I am checking out a few real estate websites). So we drove past that house, then the house in Nelson St Dad and Lib owned (I remember staying there when Peta was so young), another house I house sat once, and then headed to Portside for lunch. As we were waiting at a red light to turn into Junction Rd, I turned to look over my left shoulder. Matilda's sitting facing forward in the car now - very distracting when I look over my shoulder, as I normally get a great big smile each time! Something didn't seem quite right. I looked back towards the lights again, still red, and then looked back at Matilda. Now she seemed to be choking without any noises ... oh crap ... but at least her mouth was open, and there was something in it. I let go of the wheel, said something like "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" and reached back and was able to pull the item out of her mouth. Meanwhile, John put the park brake on, and opened his door, trying to get me to say something about what was going on.
I looked at the object I pulled out of Matilda's mouth. It was her eye patch, it's kind of like a band-aid, so it isn't very big; not normally easy to rip off, but very easy to try to eat. Matilda still puts everything in her mouth, and she has choked on some bits of chunkier food, so I've experienced her choking sitting right in front of me at the highchair, but never out of my sight like that. Very scary, but luckily quickly over and all OK. We realised afterwards that we weren't that far from our GP's rooms, and also were only about 4 housese away from Prof Led, a paediatric surgeon we know. Phew. Now Matilda's just fine, and we're going to take off the patch if it's starting to get that loose.

May-June Photos

Four generations of Moores - Mothers Day

Pirate Matilda

Cuddles with Aunty Jenny - hope you're having fun in Minnesota!

Cuddles with Aunty Petie

Happy Birthday Aunty Janet! Here's your presenet, actually, I'd like to keep the card thanks.

Last moments of freedom before the gate was put up between the TV room and back deck

Enjoying the big bath

Cuddles with D on Origin night

Cuddles with K on Origin night

Head Bobbing and Colds

I took Matilda to the paed last week to check out her head bob. Madeleine commented on it at M's christening, and it's been ongoing since then, although she doesn't really bob her head when her patch is on. The Dr decided that the head bob is a form of non-verbal communication and Matilda's just trying to chat with us. She can control it somewhat, and doesn't bob all the time, so she wasn't too concerned by it. We also got her ears checked out, as she always pulls at them when she's upset, but they looked just fine. So it was a typical paranoid first-time parent doctor's visit! ;)
We took all of Matilda's vital stats, she's just a bit over 8kgs now and 70cms long. I can't remember her head circumference, but she's in the 95th percentile for that! Her height is in the 75th percentile, and weight in the 50th. All over that's pretty decent measurements I guess.
Matilda has been fighting a bit of a cold for the past couple of weeks, on and off. Towards the end of last week, it got rather yucky, but only in the middle of the night. M's still having a feed at about 11pm (it's a dreamfeed, we wake her for it, and we should be able to phase it out soon), and on Weds, Thurs, Fri nights she just couldn't settle after the feed. M normally goes right back to sleep, so dealing with a cranky grizzly snuffled up little one when you're just desperately wanting to go back and snuggle under the doona is not fun. We had had some problems with the vaporiser, so hadn't been turning it on (nasty smells from the motor ... as it turns out, I think I overfilled it). On Fri night, JR caved in and turned it on, and between that and some infant panadol, M eventually went back to sleep at about 1:30am. Our neighbours got home at 2am and then had chats on the back deck ... Anyway, the poor love is blocked up, but mainly at night. Hopefully it will be over soon and we can all get some decent sleep at night.

Pirates, Daycare, and Vomiting - oh my!

Matilda is going very well with her eye patch, and generally doesn't rip it off ... too quickly! We're calling her our little pirate, and thanks to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, I picked up a few of pirate-themed kids books at Borders this week. We're now reading "That's not my Pirate" each night before bed. :)
Matilda started daycare last week, just two days a week for the moment, and we'll increase it to three days when I start work. Last week she spent half days at the centre, and it went rather well. I think the carers were excited to have a (relatively) little one there as all the other kids in the babies room are close to moving up to the toddlers room ... they're so old at 15 months or so!! This week Matilda spent almost the whole days there, and on the second day she even managed to have a decent afternoon sleep - pretty good given that she hasn't really shared a room with a bunch of other kids before. Next week John will take her in and pick her up, and I'll be at home ... doing jobs! Matilda's even done her first painting already, how quickly they do new things at daycare. :)
Last Wednesday as we were driving to the Hookers to watch the State of Origin match, Matilda vomited all over herself and a fair bit of her carseat. On Tuesday as we got home from town, she did the same thing. I had been thinking that she could have inherited my motion sickness, or possibly the vomiting has been brought on by her teething (we found two bottom teeth starting to stick up out of the gums last Thursday). One of the other guys at John's work has an older girl who's teething, and she's been vomiting, too. Different baby books seem to say everything from there are no side effects/symptoms of teething to yucky poos are a dead-on giveaway that teething's about to happen ...
Anyway, my motion sickness theory has now been sidelined. Matilda just vomited all over her Aunty Janet straight after dinner tonight. There's no food that's a common denominator, so I'm a bit stuck as to what's causing this (and no temperatures, lethargy, only a bit of grumpiness).
I love to share all of the fun stuff! :) Will post more photos soon.

OK, a bunch of stuff has been happening in the past few weeks. Let's start with Miss M's eyes. We saw the opthamologist last week, he was quite happy with her visual development, and said it's where he expects it to be for her age. However, her esotropia is not getting better, and we have to start patching her right eye to strengthen the left one. There will be surgery at some point after M uses her eyes more equally and before she turns two. The first two times I tried to buy eye patches, the pharmacy assistants hadn't heard of orthoptic patches, so I was sent to the wrong product (a standard, sterile adult-size eye patch, with no sticky stuff). Yesterday I finally found the right ones, which are easier to get on than the contraption we had her in yesterday ... tape over half her face, poor thing. The patches aren't fun to put on or remove, but hopefully M will get used to them.
On Saturday, Brett and Lexie came over and we spent the day cleaning up our yard (lots and lots of old palm branches/fronds pilling up around the place). 380kgs of green waste was taken to the dump. Awesome effort, which took pretty much all day - Brett was the only one who expected it would take that long! We finished the day with fish and chips on the deck. Thanks guys!! Just don't ever touch my cycad again ... :)
Sunday was my first Mothers' Day. Matilda celebrated by waking me at 5, 5:30-6, 6:30 and then finally at 7:30. I received a very nice swatch watch, and then John cooked us brekky.
We had a late morning tea with John's family, which was followed by a yummy lunch, and then my Mum and Grandma came over for roast chicken dinner. It was a great day, but a bit unsettled for M. After all the action of the weekend, she slept very well on Monday!
Yesterday, we went to check out the childcare centre that has a couple of days available for M. It's a block away from work, so very convenient, and they have an open door policy for parents (so either of us could pop in and feed M at lunch time, if we wanted). I think M will love it there, and have so much fun playing with the other kids. The staff seem very caring and experienced, and we can gradually start childcare with just an hour or two next week, which is what I'd hoped - I didn't want to be trying to start back at work on the same day M started childcare! The staff fill out lots of forms through the day for the parents about what the kids ate, what appeared in their nappies, how they played, etc, etc, so you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of day your child has had.

April-May Photos

Inspecting the Australian Flag on ANZAC day

With Aunty Jen on ANZAC Day

Taylor mob next to (my) Gramps' plaque

Taylor mob under Taylor Lane sign, named for (my) Gramps

Hanging with MorMor in the Qantas Club before flying to Melbourne

On the plane ...

Meeting Uncle Campbell

With Great-Grandma Moore and my cousin Felicity

Cuddles with Aunty Peta

Melbourne

We had our first family aeroplane trip last week, and it went pretty well. On both flights we had a row of three seats to ourselves, which was nice. I pretty much held M most of the time on both flights, except when I was eating dinner. I didn't mean to hog her, it just happened that way! M flew really well, the flight to Melbourne was great, just a little bit of grizzling. The flight home was slightly less great, M was more tired, but she went really well - anything other than screaming for the whole flight is a good thing! On arrival back in Brissie, M was completely unphased by it all, she didn't even wake up until people started standing up and getting their bags out of the overhead compartments.
M and her Dad had a great time in Melbourne, though JR found it tricky to actually get to do very much around M's sleep times. She does fall asleep in the pram, but doesn't tend to sleep for very long in it, and when you're walking around there's too much random noise that can wake her at just the wrong moment. However, they did get to Southgate and the Crown complex (where M just had to have a Batman stuffed toy from the Warner Bros store), as well as wandering around the centre of town. On Friday morning I decided to skip the conference and join my fam, and we went out for brekky in a little laneway off Flinders St. We had a nice enough brekky, M had some apples, and I got up to pay the bill while JR played with M. All of sudden JR was calling my name loudly, so I go over and M is vomiting all over herself, her pram, what a mess! M's first real projectile vomit ... in a cafe in Melbourne! Poor thing. The owner of the cafe was great, as he had three kids of his own. We got M cleaned up a bit, and headed back to the hotel to let her rest. We're not sure what the matter was, but after another vomit after lunch, we decided to avoid solids at dinner.
On Thurs night I noticed M repeating CVCV constructions for the first time (or first time I've remembered it). That's consonant vowel consonant vowel constructions. She now says ba ba ba ba. We've decided however that her first word is WOW. This seems to crop up quite a bit and
is relatively distinct. I don't know if we're reading too much into the sounds as first time parents though ... ;)

Back from the beach, off to Melbourne!

We're back from our first family vacation to Rainbow Beach. While there, M had lots of cuddles with Great-Gran Caroline, ate sand, started moving lots more, continued to dislike tinned veges (much prefers Daddy's home cooked veges), started having a bottle feed in the afternoon (and then started refusing it!). A plaque to M's Great-Gramps (my Gramps) was unveiled during the Anzac Day commemorations, and we had a big Taylor family lunch at the Sports & Rec club afterwards. While we were away, I also found out M might have a spot for two days a week at a childcare centre near Mincom central. The news made going back to work seem so soon!
Tomorrow, we're off to Melbourne for a few days for the AODC conference. M's first plane flight - woo hoo! Our flights are at sleep time, so hopefully that will be a good thing ... we'll soon find out. Lots of warm clothes are ready to be packed, and M and Daddy will be having lots of fun together in Melbourne. And I might be spending a bit more time with M than at the conference if the bottle refusal continues ... just because I thought the bottle would go well, she's been having maybe one bottle a week practically since birth ... oh well! :)

More photos from the Mama-razzi

James and Janet visited from Sydney, and met M for the first time
M with Janet
The closest M got to wearing the chicken suit she got for Christmas (to wear at Easter). Most of the tags on the suit said 00, which is what M is wearing now, but it's actually a multi size - 00-1! Hopefully it will fit next Easter ... or she'll just have to wear the chicken outfit to the shops or something. ;)
With Grandad in the park With Grandma in the park