Our "new" house

Here is a picture from yesterday when John and Cushla came to visit us and see the new addition of sky to our house! We had several MASSIVE pine trees cut down and now we have no enclosure alongside our back fence and no more shade! We have lots of sunlight and our view now encompasses a rural field beside us that is just so much nicer than looking at a wall of trees. We are thrilled with the change; it feels like we have a holiday home now! The extra sun might be a bit harsh in the depth of summer, but it will be so much brighter in winter.

Emily's first swing.

Emily's first ride in a swing from Candace K on Vimeo.

Rotorua and Single Speed World Champs weekend

Last weekend we visited Mark, Rachel and Holly in Rotorua, so that the boys could compete in the World Single Speed Mountain Bike Champs. Basically, 1000 riders, from about 30 countries, who almost all dress up like weirdos and ride 40ish km on bikes with only one gear. Oh, and if they want to take short cuts in the race, there are places to do so, but you must either drink/chug a beer to earn that shortcut, or if you don't drink you have to down a small bottle of concentrated Redbull. You know, pretty standard athletic endeavour!
The boys dressed like horse jockeys. Note the extra effort the boys put into putting horses on their handlebars, and the white women's tights they wore as riding pants. I had thought I might take the tights over from Bryce after a good wash, but as muddy bum bike stains, don't come out very well, I have taken a pass from inheriting the tights. Dirty bum on white pants is not a good look, outside of the bike trails.
From left: Bryce, Joel, Mark and Carl


Emily, the gangsta rapper: "take heed, cuz I'm a lyrical poet; Daddy's hat's on my head, just in case you didn't know it"


Emily, the avid bike race supporter. She even called out at the riders as they went past. It sounded more like "ah yaah, ah yaah yaah, blllbb bbaaah", but I know that means "Go Daddy!"

We were able to crash a family get together that Pam and Andrew had in Turangi on our long drive home; and visited with them for a little bit. It was good to break up the long drive and because we don't get to Tauranga that often, we will take Pam and Andrew time however we can!

I did it!

So, after about 22 years of having long enough hair to put in a ponytail and looking like I am 18 for almost all of that time (despite an older looking face), I have finally cut it all off (most of it anyway). I could have gone more drastic and maybe that is the next step. I am not against going back to long hair in the future and as some friends have pointed out, I am just taking a "holiday" from my hair! We shall see how soon I try to grow it out again though. For now, its fun and light and will take so much less time!
Before the cut:

The vast amount of hair that was cut; it doesn't look really long here, but it sure was a mound of thickness that is gone!

After:

I think I look more like a "Mrs" now than before.

Em playing with her maracas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZzFW2yxQOI

Emily is 4344 hours old!

So Emily has reached her 6 month birthday and like clockwork, the skills have increased! She is sitting up, unsupported, as of yesterday and it is so nice to have her upright when playing with her, and not strapped to something! Her favourite activity at the moment seems to be sitting up, with rattles in her hands, which she shakes up and down and bangs them together like a violent rock musician.
She went swimming the other day and we avoided a poo disaster in the pool by about 30 minutes! I am so glad that we were not the ones who had the pool closed down, but as this particular fecal dropping was not so much of a dropping but a melliflual or aqueous substance, I consider us lucky. I am not sure of the swimmers she was wearing could have withheld that sort of entity!
For those of you who have been reading the blog for months now, you will notice she is getting much bigger than George, the bear in her monthly photos!

Cushla and John visit and Thanksgiving

Last Saturday, John and Cushla came to visit and see Emily and our clever little girl decided to learn how to roll from her front to her back just before they got here; so she had some performing to do once they arrived. Its always nice to see them and nice for Emily too.


On the Sunday, Bryce did a 50km mountain bike race (although he didn't know it was 50km when he started, as it was just do as many laps as you can do in 3 hours). He rode really well and came in 2nd, and also won a major spot prize of a membership to a local gym. Pretty exciting to hear his name called out for the big prize. Not sure whether we will use it though or give it away as Bryce is not much for fitness classes and although I am, the times will be hard to fit into our schedule.

I am still struggling with my nightly dream sequence which involves me dreaming about Emily being in bed with us, and my worry beginning that we are going to roll over and suffocate her. Keep in mind, she hasn't been in our bed since she was about 3 weeks old, and even then, she only ever slept on our chests, for an hour or so.
So since I have been having this dream at least 5 or 6 nights a week, Bryce has been getting increasingly aware of what I am doing during the night; as I search up and down the side of his body, in my slumber, looking for my daughter (who I am convinced is in the bed with us). Once he says something to me, I usually wake up enough to stop searching and just go back to sleep. However, I have now started recognizing that I am doing this and will rebut Bryce when he tells me "she's not here!" The other night, I said to him, after he told me she wasn't in bed with us, "Yeah, I know she's not, but she is". Two nights ago, my rebuttal was "Yeah, I know, but I am just protecting her head from your elbow"....even though I had grabbed Bryce's elbow thinking it was Emily's head.
Some deep seeded worry in my sub-conscious I guess. Wonder when it will stop! Maybe as she sleeps through the night more often?

So, back to the rest of Sunday: we had Thanksgiving dinner here, kiwi styles! It was the first time we had hosted a bigger group for lunch or dinner and having never tried to do a thanksgiving or Christmas dinner very much I was a bit nervous for it all being timed correctly. Our friends John and Kim and their children Jackson and Anika came over, along with Guy, Cheryl and Mia, and Clare and Brent. The food was great and the schwarties (mom's family favourite potato dish) I made were yummy!


We tried putting Emily and Mia in the bath together as we got them ready for bed, but as I jumped up to get the camera, Emily got upset at me running off and there were only tears left behind in the bath! Mia was loving being in the bath with someone else though!

It seems that our lil girl is more of a boys girl and is a bit of a flirt. She is extra interested in boys (of any age) and gives them more smiles than any female.
(Much like her mother was as a teenager, but it started a bit later for her!)
Anyway, Thanksgiving was good times, around great friends and it was nice to feel like there was a touch of Canadiana here in NZ, knowing all the Canucks back home were celebrating too!

Commonwealth Games spectating

Emily has become a full time sports supporter for the Commonwealth Games (or as Candace puts it the "Common man roll up and have a go games") fully decked out in her Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics gear. Looks like we need to get the matching kiwi supporters gear, though the New Zealand traditional black is no where near as cool as the Canadian Red.

From big roads to little floods

We departed the land of big roads and headed back to little old NZ and our sweet little house. (and yes that is a 19 lane highway if you look carefully and count all the on/off ramps!)


A couple of days after we get home we had a day of solid unrelenting rain. Anyone that knows anything about our driveway knows that in serious rain, the water flowing down the drive takes all the crushed limestone with it leaving rain ruts ready to be fixed.

Here is a previous fix.


Well this time the rain eased but the amount of water flowing down the drive did not. A bit of an explore found that we had sprung a new spring in the middle of the drive, with plenty of water flowing out from the ground, and down the drive.

Morning arrived and the help call was made to great friend John the Plumber. Surprisingly it had stopped raining at this stage making finding the leak pretty easy, just dig where the water was flowing from. The more we dug, the more water flowed out of the growing hole in the drive.

This photo is not quite the truth, John did all the work, all I did was fill in the hole.

One fixed mains water pipe.

At the end of the day Emily seemed pretty happy to not have a spring in the driveway.

Back to Kiwi land

Well, well, well. Here we are back home in New Zealand. What a whirlwind 5 1/2 weeks it was but so amazing to see everyone and to introduce Emily to everybody. It was great also to dress her up in summer clothes and take her swimming in the pool and at the beach. It will be interesting to see how much different she is in the water here, when it gets warm enough. She will be about 4 months older and will be much more wriggly, I bet!

We had a ton of fun and learned alot about how Emily works. There were a few times where I had to cancel plans or pull back on what we were doing because I learned that she would get a bit miserable if we travelled around too much, but in general we took Emily out heaps and she was very tolerant. She even enjoyed it I think. Yesterday, she had a bad day fighting the jet lag, until we went to Bryce's work and she saw other people. She smiled for everyone! So I wonder if she was just understimulated at home for the first time in over a month and wanted to be out doing stuff!

Emily is 5 months old

Quick pics from Canada

Candace and Emily

Poppa Ian teaching Emily the art of lawn mowing (disclaimer - lawnmower not running!)

Emily relaxing with Nana and Poppa


Juls, Sarah and Candace

Amy and Jeff at their wedding

Robyn and Laurence's wedding

Sneaking some "me time"

Emily is just about over her jet lag, but I have had no "me time" in the past few days since she has not been sleeping long at all. Alas, I hope we are in for a longer sleep tonight.

We are in Ontario! That is, Emily and I are in Ontario. Poor Daddy has to go without his ladies for another few weeks until we all reconnect for Robyn's wedding.
Emily and I skyped Bryce the other night and she absolutely recognized him which was very cute. She squealed with delight and gave huge grins to Bryce on the computer screen! She doesn't really do that at all so it was awesome to see that she knows who her Daddy is.
Em slept really well on the flight from Auckland to Vancouver, including sleeping about 10 hours, on a 12 1/2hr flight! Air NZ has bassinets that you can sleep your babies in so that was very helpful. I got a bit ancy and kept checking that she was asleep but need not have worried! There were some nice Grandma's sitting beside me who were very lovely and kind and held Emily very quickly when the offer was given, and when I needed a hand.
It was great to see my Aunt Lynette, Uncle Bob and Grandpa and GrandJoan in BC. We also got to visit with cousin Krista and her daughter Phoebe (3 months old) and cousins Janet, Mike and their kids Zach, Rachel and Nathan, along with Mike and Kate. We had dinner with 13 of us at the table on Thursday night. It was lovely, as Emily, who often plays shy with strangers in NZ, just gave smiles to everyone she was passed around to!
Unfortunately, Emily and I had some sleeping issues our first night in BC. She went to sleep at 9:30 and then woke at 10:15. I tried to feed her and put her back to sleep but she was not interested in sleeping, but only eating. I had no more milk for her and since we had not used formula ever, I had nothing to give her. My aunt and uncle were already fast asleep and when I called out to them to try to wake them, all I heard was snoring. So I pushed on and thought I could fill up her tummy with water. So I boiled some water and as I began to give her some water I remembered reading something about it being unsafe to give babies too much water so as not to give them a water imbalance in their system. I was not sure how much water was too much so I stopped feeding her the water and texted some friends in NZ to try to get some help. I was overtired and frantic from all the crying at this stage, so I called Bryce. He did not know how to help me, except to try to get me to tell him about the flight. I was not in the mood to chat really, just to get Emily to sleep so I got more upset. I received a text that said try some mashed banana. I went to the fruit bowl which was full but had no bananas. As I searched through the bowl, I then found a banana and for the moment, I had this feeling like "yes, we have a BANANA! I can feed her!! She will sleep! I will sleep!" and then.....I realized it was just a piece of wooden fruit! I cried out loud in a childhood whiny voice, "oh no...its just a wood banana!" I was broken! I then proceeded to try to puree some apples, which I cooked in the microwave and then pushed through a sieve. I got about 1/2 tsp of apple and fed it to her. She liked it; the little bit she actually got in her mouth and stopped crying. I put her in her portacot and walked away. 2 minutes later, she started crying again....and so did I.

So I realized I needed help and went in and tried to wake my aunt and uncle, who I couldnt differentiate (as I stood at the foot of their bed) which snoring person was my aunt. I finally picked a side of the bed and went to wake her up. She got up and helped me by taking Emily and then waking up my uncle and telling him he needed to go to the store with me to get some formula. You can imagine he was a bit surprised at the request at 12:30am! Lynette, in her wisdom knew that the formula would help, but it was more important to get EMily and I seperated so that I could calm down and not upset Emily further. By the time Bob and I got back from the store, Emily was asleep! What a mission!
Sidenote: we tried the formula the next day just to be sure EMily would take it if the same thing happened the next night and just as my mom finished pouring it in the bottle, she knocked over the rest of it and the rest of the formula was gone. So, Aunt Lynette looked at Bob and sent him back to the store to get some more....just in case. I think he was okay with that though, as the alternative would be another late night store outing!
So we thanked the BC crew immensely for helping us get through our first nighttime travel disaster and so far we have had no repeats here in Ontario. Mom and I had a great flight with Emily from Vancouver to Toronto. Although Emily was responsible for slowing down the de-planing line as people stopped to look at her and smile and she gave everyone a big grin. What a cutie!
We have really enjoyed being with Poppa and Nana, who are getting lots of cuddles from Emily. Em will ALWAYS give Poppa a big smile, even when she has been upset prior to his attempts to make her smile. My Dad's just got something that all babies just love about him!
Today Emily went in a pool for the first time. She was tentative at first, in action only; she didn't cry at all. Then she just wanted to get back in, so I got in the pool too and she loved being on her tummy and kickin her legs. She has changed from hating her baths in NZ to loving baths and the pool here. Maybe our nights of screaming baths are over.....for now at least!
Amy's wedding is this weekend, so that will be a big test for mother and daughter, as I will be away from her most of the day. Poppa and Nana are babysitting all day and will attempt to bring her over to me amidst the wedding day plans to give Emily some Mommy time (and milk!). So excited for Amy and Jeff's wedding though. It is going to be fantastic!
More stories to come.

4 months old!

Here is Emily's 4 month picture with George the bear. She is definitely outgrown his height now and getting lil chubby legs now that are very cute. Even though she has gotten bigger, she still is a light weight and we are trying to give her a bit more food. A bit hard when all she drinks is milk. We are beginning the whole "when to start solids" debate with her. I am not in any rush to start her eating "real food" as she is messy enough with her milk; I can just imagine how overly excited she will be when she gets her hands all through her food!
We met up with some of the coffee group (antenatal class) on Thursday and took the "baby lineup photo". The babies are getting bigger and we will need to change the way we do the photo soon to fit them all in! It sure is cool to watch the other babies grow and how much they all change between our get togethers. The ladies in the group are wonderful and I find them very supportive and good fun to hang out with. It is great to have other people to confide your worries in and to get tips and tricks to use with the "drama of the week" with your own baby, because someone is the group has usually just gone through the same drama......and survived!

We went to Napier last weekend to visit Carl and Denise and catch up with lil Liam. He is growing so fast and is so intelligent! It is great to hear him say several words and identify things. He's got the greatest little stride when he is on a mission. We have really seen how quick Emily will go from being pretty stationary now to moving fast all over the place. She'll keep us on our toes, that's for sure.
On Saturday, we walked over to the local netball courts to watch Sammy play in her school netball final. Sammy played really well and they won their game, so she was pretty excited! Way to go girl!
On the Sunday we went over to Jess and Marty's place to have coffee and see their little guy Reuben. His eyes are a dreamy bright blue and so beautiful. It was nice to see them again, and we were sure to take the Daddy photo with all the new Dads and their kids. Emily and I will be in Canada for New Zealand Father's Day this year so we are going to celebrate it early with Bryce this weekend. I know Bryce is ecstatic about being a Dad and he is doing such a great job; I wouldn't want him to miss his "special day". Lucky for him, the day we chose to celebrate it on, he is riding in a Cyclocross race in the morning so it bolds well for one of his favourite days already!


This last photo is of Emily with a summer hat on, in honor of our impending trip to the North American summer. It will be fun to see how she likes the sun, and beaches and warmer weather!

I'm 113 days old.