Movie Review - My Super Ex-Girlfriend

This week our car needed to go to Toyota to get a new seatbelt fitted so that it would pass its six monthly Warrant of Fitness (mechanical check). The old seatbelt was a bit frayed. So since Toyota is right around the corner from the movie theatre, I dropped off the car and then went to the movies while they worked on it.

The first Wednesday of every month our local theatre has a Mums and Bubs session where you can take your babies along to the movies. It's dark so that you can feed them in privacy, and they can hopefully sleep, and it's full of other mums and bubs so no-one minds if they cry.

Kathleen and I went and saw My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Well, I saw it as best I could while also keeping an eye on Kathleen crawling up and down the aisle playing with the other babies. She had a good time and made a couple of friends.

Maybe it was because I was paying too much attention to Kathleen, but I didn't find the movie very interesting at all. It was just kinda boring really. It was too easy to be distracted away from the movie by Kat and I was only half watching it. I don't think I missed too much - I think it would probably still have been boring even if I hadn't had the distraction.

So not a movie to recommend I'm afraid.

-Megz

Father's Day

Sunday was Father's Day in New Zealand. I wanted to make the day really special for Peter for his first Father's Day as a father, to acknowledge just how much I really appreciate all his help and support. He plays with Kathleen and she loves it. He's really good at putting her to bed without her fussing. And whenever she wakes up during the night he always jumps out of bed to her. Although she has been sleeping through the night for some time now, she still wakes up several times a night. She sleeps with a dummy to help settle her, but during the night she will drop it or knock it out of her mouth, and then she will start crying. Peter always goes to her and puts it back in her mouth and soothes her back to sleep again. And I am so grateful for this because somehow he has the ability to do this and then go straight back to sleep again. Whereas if I were to get up I would then spend the next hour tossing and turning unable to get back to sleep. And as soon as I started drifting off, Kat would cry again. So Peter, thank you, I really do appreciate everything you do.

In the morning I kept Kat quiet in the living room while Peter enjoyed a sleep in. Then after they both woke up again I made omelettes for the family and we all ate at the dining room table together. Kat had her own special omelette cut up into tiny pieces which she was able to grab and put into her mouth by herself. Of course much more ended up in her lap than in her mouth, but she had a lot of fun and she still got something to eat.

It was a lovely day, so in the afternoon we went down to the park. Spring is definitely here now. We took Kat on the swings and slides but she didn't seem all that impressed. Then we found a spot on the grass and took her socks off and let her have a crawl around on the grass for the first time ever. Maybe she was getting a bit tired but she wasn't all that interested in crawling around. She liked the daisy and tried to put that in her mouth. She also wanted to put the stick in her mouth too but hit herself with it instead (oops).

That evening we finished the day off with a big meal of lasagne, Peter's favourite.

Photos to come soon.

-Megz

Overseas Trips

It has been 10 years since I did my big OE - three months backpacking around Europe by myself. It's so hard to believe that it's been 10 years. I've been reading my travel diary and I can just picture everything so clearly. It was one of the best things I've ever done. Unfortunately I did the trip in the not-quite-digital-yet age, so have no digital photos or electronic blog. One of these days I'll get around to scanning everything. One cool thing though is that I've recently managed to make contact again with someone I met while I was travelling. The internet is great for finding people you've lost contact with.

It's also the anniversary of another big overseas trip I took. Three years ago I took the month of August off work and went around the world visiting friends in the USA, England and Russia. For the past month I've slowly been uploading the photos to Flickr, for no other reason than they hadn't been uploaded yet.

At the same time I've also transferred my travel blog from Geocities to Blogger. My travel blog from Peter and my trip to Europe in 2004 has also been transferred across.

It's nice to look back and remember when I was young and free. We won't be doing that sort of thing again for a long, long time...

-Megz

Mexican Restaurant

As promised, Peter and I took Kathleen out to a restaurant on Thursday this week. We went to the Mexican Cafe in downtown Auckland. We arrived about 7 o'clock and it was already quite crowded. I think we got the last table on the balcony.

When Kathleen and I were in Wellington last time (about six weeks ago) we went out with the family to Mungavin Blues restaurant in Porirua. On that occasion Kathleen was very unhappy, did not want to sit in the highchair by herself, wanted Mummy to hold her the whole time, etc. So naturally it was with a bit of trepidation that I took her out again.

The first thing we did was to sit her down in the highchair by herself. I was expecting her to start screaming immediately but she was content to just sit there and look around at everyone and everything. There were lots of lights and lots of people and lots of noise. She looked a bit stunned but was definitely taking everything in.

Now, bringing your own food along to a restaurant is utterly rude, but a baby can get away with anything. So we brought along her bowl and spoon, and a banana. Banana's have got to be the easiest of all baby foods - simply peel, mash and eat. No warming up required, no refrigeration required. And they're so yummy. It was also a good distraction to stop Kat getting too bored while we waited for our meals.

I ordered the chicken burrito and Peter had the beef platter grande. Our meals arrived while Kat was still eating hers, so we took turns feeding her. Kat's spoon in one hand, my fork in the other hand, one bite for you, one bite for me. Just don't get the hands mixed up ... I don't think she'd like the jalapenos too much. Neither did I.

All in all it was a great night out. Of course it was a lot different from going out before Kat was born - we didn't stay out too long and keep her up late (no dessert for us), conversation was pretty limited as our attention was on her most of the time, but it was incredibly fun to share the experience with her, and see her looking round open-mouthed in wonder.

We will definitely be doing it again.




-Megz

CRAWLING !

It's official, baby Kat has started crawling. She made her first tentative steps on Saturday night, and now she is (slowly) scooting all around the room getting into everything. At first I don't think she realised the significance of what she was doing. She was just moving from toy to toy without any other purpose. I think to her it was as if the toy got closer to her, rather than she had gotten closer to the toy. But now she understands what she is doing, and will follow me if I leave the room. Of course first she'll cry but then she'll start to follow. Then she'll stop crawling and cry some more.

This new found skill has necessitated some changes on our part. Most importantly the removal of anything that looks like a toy but isn't - i.e. cords and wires, the heater (but only when she's awake, once she goes to bed the heater comes back out and I huddle in front of it again, brrrrr). It has also sparked a major spring clean from about knee level downwards, concentrating on all those little nooks and crannies that aren't noticable to big people but are just the right size for little fingers. Such as underneath the refrigerator. Ugh. Next thing will be to fit kiddy-locks to the cupboard doors, or at least to make sure there's nothing dangerous in the cupboards. Don't want to stifle all her fun by locking everything away.

I'm really proud of Kathleen picking up crawling so quickly. She has been sitting up on her own for ages, and for about a month has been launching herself forward from her sitting position, to be on her hands and knees. However she didn't know what to do then and would get stuck and drop down onto her tummy and cry. She has never really liked "tummy time". The first breakthrough came about two weeks ago when she learnt to roll over from her back to her tummy. I think all this extra tummy time might have been motivation for the second breakthrough about a week later, when she learned to push herself back up to a sitting position from her tummy.

Our little girl is growing up so quickly.

The cats need to watch out now ...


-Megz