Names

I normally call Kathleen and Victoria by their full names when I'm talking to them. I figure that when they're older they can choose their own nicknames without us deciding on it for them. If Kathleen wants to be Kat or Katie or Kathy then that's her choice. Ditto if Victoria wants to be Vicky, Tori/Tora or whatever.

However when I'm writing/blogging it's a different story. I'll often type Kat or Vicky as it's only three or five characters respectively as opposed to eight. Much faster and easier. So most people who read my blog will probably think of them as Kat and Vicky, but in reality they are always Kathleen and Victoria.

The exception was when Kathleen was first learning to talk and she called herself Kiki. Then we called her Kiki all the time, as in "what does Kiki want for lunch", "it's time for Kiki to have a nap", etc. But when Kathleen learned to say "Kathleen" correctly she asked us to stop calling her Kiki ... we said "Kiki" and she corrected us and said "no, I'm Kassleeen" so we asked if she wanted us to call her Kathleen from now on and she said "yes". So she has not been Kiki for two or three months now.

Also when Kathleen was learning to talk she said "W'tora" instead of "Victoria". Now she says "Wittoria". However we picked up on it and began calling Victoria "Wee Tora". We still call her that every now and then but I'm sure it will stop as she gets older and is not so wee any more.

Having said all that though, I do often call Kathleen "Angel" and Victoria "Little One". I also call them both "darling" and "sweetheart" interchangably - it solves the problem of getting mixed up and using the wrong name, just call them both "sweetheart"!

-Megz

PS: No photos in this post as we're having temporary computer problems. Will add some later.

My Birthday

My birthday was on Saturday. However this year I had three birthdays.

The first was the previous weekend. It was around 2 o'clock on Sunday afternoon and Peter, Kathleen and I were finishing off our lunch. Victoria was asleep in bed, and I was starting to think about putting Kathleen down for a nap too. When all of a sudden we heard the back door open. No, not a knock at the back door, but somebody actually opening it and walking right in. I jumped up to see who it was, and found all my friends from Palmerston North. And they had brought the party with them, snacks, cake and all. I was SO surprised and was not expecting it at all. It turns out two of them had to be in Wellington anyway that weekend, so the third came down as well to surprise me. Well it worked! Thank you so much guys :-)

It was during this this surprise party that I mentioned that Peter would be playing paintball on my actual birthday, and so it would be a pretty quiet weekend for me. That's when Lou suggested I come up to Palmy and spend the weekend there. So I did.

On Good Friday afternoon, Kathleen, Victoria and I drove the two hours up to Palmerston North. Haven't been there in about 6 months and Kat has changed a lot since then. It used to be guaranteed that she would sleep for the whole trip but now that she is bigger she stayed awake the whole time. Thankfully she was content to talk to herself and me the whole time, and play with toys, and it was a pleasant journey. Victoria slept the whole way.

Friday evening all the friends came around again for a barbeque. Then on Saturday, my actual birthday, Lou, Caliope, Kathleen, Victoria and I went to The Esplanade where Kathleen fed the ducks and played at the playground. While Victoria slept in the snugly. It was a fantastic afternoon out. Sunday morning we had fun hunting for Easter eggs then in the afternoon we drove back home again, and it was a pretty similar story to the drive up.

On Easter Monday (a public holiday in NZ), Peter and I pretended it was my birthday again, and also that it was Easter Sunday. I hid marshmellow eggs all around the house for Kathleen to find, which she really enjoyed. Peter made breakfast and gave me my birthday present - a voucher for a massage and spa treatment at Is Bliss. I am really looking forward to it. Not sure when I'll go, but it will be one weekend soon I hope.

So there were my three birthdays. And all were lots of fun.

It's funny, but the last few years my birthday's have just felt like another day, rather than something special. That's probably because of one of three reasons:

• Four of the last five birthdays have been spent away from home: 2004 in Los Angeles, 2006 in Wellington & Palmy when we still lived in Auckland, 2007 in Washington State, and now 2008 in Palmy again.
• Since having kids I can't take the day off "work" like I used to do. It may be my birthday but I still have to get up at 2am to feed the baby.
• Since turning 30 I haven't really wanted to have birthdays anyway. It won't be long before I'm at the age when I dread birthdays rather than just don't want them.

In other news, we are all doing well. Victoria is growing stronger and stronger. I don't think it will be long until she is sitting up by herself. She still doesn't have any teeth, but dribbles and drools constantly. She is now very interested in everything that goes on around her. Kathleen is still loving creche. Peter is back working in Petone after a couple of weeks in town, and is back to the 1 hour + commute instead of 30 minutes. He is still looking for another job in town. Had an interview last week and is still waiting to hear back from them.

-Megz

The logic of a two year old

Kathleen wakes up in the morning and I go in to get her out of her cot. The following is a typical conversation ...

Kat: "I want to watch tella-wision"

Mummy: "We don't have time to watch anything. First we're going to have breakfast. Then we're going to get dressed. And then we're going to ..." (insert day's activity here)

Kat: "I watch sump-a-nee" (something)

Mummy: "You can watch something while you have lunch, but right now we're going to have breakfast. What would you like for breakfast?"

Kat: "I don't want breakfast, I want lunch!"

LOL

Getting Out and About

Kathleen, Victoria and I are finally starting to get out and mingle in the local community. We have been living here just over a year now and haven't made any friends, which is a shame. I would have liked for Kathleen to have had other children to play with over the last year. Unfortunately, with our two girls being born right in the middle of the current baby boom, places at early childhood centres are limited. I've been turned away from two different places because the waiting lists were full. Kathleen is currently on the waiting list for both Playcentre and Montessori, and Victoria is by default also on the waiting list. (Six months ago the waiting list for Playcentre was estimated at a year long but may be down to six months by now).

But that's not to say we've been stuck at home the whole time. We started going to playgroup at the beginning of last year, every Wednesday morning and sometimes on a Monday as well. Plus for the last six or so months we've also been going to music group every Friday. However it's been a bit difficult to break in and make friends at those places. Kathleen's been of an age where she just plays alongside but not with other children. And I've been a bit too shy and not really made much conversation with other parents past "how old is your child?". The age range of the children at playgroup goes from 0 up to 4 years, so there has only been a limited number of children Kathleen's age there.

But that is all starting to change...

Victoria has definitely opened up new avenues for us. Everyone loves a baby and loves to come over and talk to you if you have a baby with you. And share horror stories, LOL.

This week we went to our first Plunket run coffee group for babies born in November and December last year. A room full of 2 and 3 month old babies! Of the dozen or so mums there, about 4 were second time (or more) mums. As we all have some common ground, hopefully this will turn into a regular event at least, or some new friendships at best. And Victoria will have some friends her own age once they grow older.

But the biggest news is that Kathleen has started atttending the creche run by our local Plunket. She attends three hours on a Thursday morning from 9-12. Today was her second session. Last week Victoria and I stayed with her the whole time. This week we left for about half an hour. Next week we'll go away for a bit longer, until she's comfortable enough for me to leave her there on her own the whole time. Actually I don't think she'll have a problem with it. I pretty much spent the whole time today in the corner playing with Victoria and talking with the other mums. The only time I intervened was to stop Kathleen from getting into arguments with other children (the downside of not having had other children to play with is not knowing how to share, but it's only been a couple of small instances and I'm sure she will learn pretty quick).

At her first session last week she had an absolute ball. She had so much fun that by the end of it she was absolutely exhausted and just had to have a lie down in the playhouse.

Already she's been exposed to new experiences that she hasn't had at home - messy play with sand and mud pies, creating stamp pictures, playing with clay, "painting" the fence with water, and just lots of different toys, puzzles and books. It's going to be a brilliant experience for her. I'm starting to feel bad for not having done those things with her at home, but I either didn't think of it or didn't really want the mess in the house. But she does have playdoh and she loves her blackboard, and I'm fully intending on buying some paint when she's older.

In other news, Kathleen is ready to drop her afternoon nap completely. Which is a pain for me because I'm so exhausted that I really look forward to her going to bed for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I'm still persisting with putting her to bed after lunch, but she just talks to herself or plays with toys. At the moment I'm leaving her for about an hour to rest and then getting her back up again. She's normally quite worn out by dinner time and I'm not quite sure what to do about that, if I should bring dinnertime and bedtime forward earlier, or what.

Kathleen's language skills continue to amaze. She's moved on to more abstract concepts like "me" and "I", for example, "I take piggy with I", rather than saying "Kiki" (which by the way she has also dropped and now calls herself "Kass-Leeeen Hammul-tummm").

Victoria has lately started squealing in the cutest little baby way. Her neck is getting a lot stronger - she likes sitting on your lap but her head normally slumps to her chest after a short while, and she still hates tummy time but can hold her head up for a few seconds now which she couldn't do before.

Evenings continue to be a difficult time for us. I try and give both girls a bath at the same time, which sometimes means keeping Victoria awake longer than she would like. And with Kathleen not napping during the day anymore it also means keeping her up longer than she'd like too. So there's usually a lot of grizzling at bathtime lately.

Victoria still wakes up once during the night for a feed, which is really getting to be exhausting. The last couple of nights I've started ignoring her when she wakes up, and both times she has gone back to sleep for another hour.

Recently I got hand impressions made of both girls. I have to highly recommend Twinkle Toes. Nike who runs the Wellington branch is very friendly and the finished product is fantastic. The actual process of taking the impressions is very quick and easy, taking only about 20 seconds. Actually, the most difficult part was taking a photo to mount in the frame, of both girls looking at the camera and not moving.

And now, some comparison photos of the girls...

Kathleen age 11 weeks	Victoria age 11 weeks
Kathleen age 14 weeks	Victoria age 14 weeks
Kathleen age 15 weeks	Victoria age 15 weeks

-Megz

Three Months

Victoria is now three months old. She is growing strong and fast. She went to the doctors today for her 3-month immunisations which she handled very well, only crying a little bit. They weighed her and she is exactly 5kg. On the smaller side for her age, but she has always been small.

But she is growing quickly both physically and developmentally. Touch wood I think the worst of the newborn stage is over with now, and we're coming in to the cute learning and discovery phase.

She’s a pretty happy girl most of the time now, no longer the screaming newborn who would scream for hours at a time (ok that's a slight exaggeration). Now if she’s crying I’ve got a pretty good idea of why – she’s either hungry or tired or wants attention.

She is so much more interactive nowadays. She’ll lie there and talk to you and smile up at you. Or sometimes she’ll just ignore you completely and stare and smile off into space.

She’s also very settled too, happy to lie under her play gym by herself for ages, and even if you try and interact with her she will ignore you and keep staring at the toys. Sometimes this can be a good thing because Kathleen still takes up an awful lot of my time and attention, but I feel guilty that I don't pay enough attention to Victoria at times.

She's sleeping pretty well at night now, waking up once during the night for a feed. During the day she will protest having a nap quite strongly, but once in bed will generally go off to sleep on her own ok. She tends to have one big nap and a few short naps during they day, unless we're out.

I think managing both Kathleen and Victoria is starting to get a little easier. Victoria is no longer as constantly needy as she was in the beginning, and Kathleen is getting used to having to share mummy. I’ll put Vicky down under the play gym and often Kathleen will climb in there with her and give her kisses and cuddles. I’m so pleased she still seems to like her little sister. Victoria seems to absolutely adore her big sister and is always happy to be on the receiving end of all the cuddles and kisses.

I think Victoria is starting to teethe. She has her hands in her mouth a lot of the time now and really chomps on them. she even tries to put her hands so far into her mouth that she makes herself gag! She also likes to bite things, including me, OUCH! She's not quite at the stage of being able to pick things up yet, but if you put something into her hand she'll hold onto it for a short while.

It's interesting raising a second child. While we're not raising Victoria any differently from Kathleen, there are subtle differences re things I learned the first time round. Such as not trying to force Victoria to sleep if she wakes up. With Kathleen I spent hours trying to rock her to sleep. Now with Victoria if she wakes up after half an hour, I will get her up and she's usually pretty happy with this. I also don't stress about getting her back to bed quite so much as I used to. I wait for her to tell me she's tired rather than watching the clock.

I also expect that she will be learning a lot through osmosis, as she is often in the room when I am reading Kathleen bedtime stories, so she is hearing a lot more language than Kathleen ever did (Well it was just Kat and I at home alone so who was I going to talk to - myself?). Plus Kathleen and I are often singing songs from nursery rhymes or TV so I expect Victoria will grow up always knowing these songs. It will be interesting to see if this is the case.

Cheers,
Megz