REverberations - Family

William Claude Gould

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:10:55 -0500

Born 12:02 on Saturday 7th August 2010, we now have a little son William. He was born in Campbelltown hospital (after Camden's maternity ward was closed after we had signed up there) with the assistance of the amazing midwifery staff there and primarily our midwife Linda.
Liz once again amazed me with the way she gave birth - this time not even taking the two Panadol she had birthing Phoebe. It was all very natural, in the water, and in retrospect about as relaxed as you could expect such a process to be. Although I'm sure she wouldn't describe it using that word!

Being very close to choosing a homebirth originally, we were intending to leave hospital as soon as possible as it's never the best place to be for what we feel is a very natural, non-medical process. However the hospital staff had some concerns about his well-being and he and Liz ended up staying two nights in various tight spaces amongst the amazingly busy maternity ward. We were extremely happy to be given the all-clear to return home on Monday morning, and have spent the time since coming to terms with two little people living in our house.

Neither Liz nor I want to jinx the process, but thus far he's been very settled, feeding well (almost constantly!) and sleeping contentedly. Time will tell if this excellent state of affairs continues.

Phoebe is doing really well, understanding that our "family cuddles" have grown from three to four people, being gentle, and at least trying to understand when we can't give her immediate attention all the time. I have two weeks off and with luck this will continue after I return to work.

As you may expect, our little man has his own website at williamgould.net, currently containing a selection of pregnancy and birth photos.

His middle name Claude honours my mother's father, and the first name we chose on its own merits, but also ties in nicely with grandfather Claude's surname - Williams.

Many people asked if we knew what gender we were having - we didn't this time - and then whether we wanted a boy to "balance things". Neither of us believed this was in any way necessary, but now that we have our little man, we wouldn't change him for anything.

Welcome to the world, William. We're so happy to have to have you in our family!

Back to Picton we go

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:44:47 -0500

We've just spent our first night in a new house. No, not our new house we intend to build, just a different rental property.

The one we moved into in December when our previous house in Picton was sold was a significant compromise. Given only two weeks to find a place and move out, we didn't have a lot of choice. But we were told at the time that the owners (one of who lives on site) were planning on selling it at the end of this year. So, this move was to preempt that while the newest little bubba is still inside, but also to get around the issues we had with the place.

The landlords were almost completely unresponsive, only wanting to do the bare minimum, and reneging on promises they made to fix the place up. Paying for 5 acres but only feeling we had the use of the house and immediate surrounds due to the landlady living (illegally) on site was another. Lack of garages or any external storage when we have two cars, a trailer, a ride-on mower and a caravan to store was starting to be a big hassle too.

So, we took the hit of pain and moved. We're back in Picton (well, north-west of it really) on 5 acres again, but this time with the landlords safely away in Sydney somewhere. The move was about as painful as you can imagine. Actually no, it would have been worse without the help of our parents - thanks to Margaret, Mum, and Dad (Happy Birthday!)

The owners had locked more locks than they gave us keys for, and then when we finally did get in the the place looked like a bombsite. It took three cleaners all day yesterday to make it acceptable. Not a good start.

But the setting is gorgeous - tucked in a valley. It's so picturesque that today AAMI are shooting a commercial there. Not sure if it's one of those dodgy driver ones, but if so then the approach road is certainly a good setting.

Hopefully this will have been an overall good move, and the last we make before we move onto our land.

Side and Rear Fencing Up

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:30:33 -0500

Our neighbour asked us to get our boundary fence up as he wanted to start storing vehicles for his business on his land, so that was incentive enough to get that organised. We decided against doing the front fence at this stage due to the money that could be better used elsewhere, but even the process of getting two more sides fenced has been most exciting!

The pre-subdivision use of the land had a strange garden that we can't quite work out which stretched across our boundary, so the first task was to clear a path through that for the fence to run:

Then to get to the old wire on the rear fence, I had to hack huge amounts of overgrown grass and blackberries from the farm to our rear:

Once this clearing was done, a week or so later the most excellent fencers turned up and made quick work of getting holes sunk:

And posts in:

Liz even stopped by near a fresh post to show off her baby bump! :

A couple of days later, and we had 300-odd metres of fencing done - the side brand new and the rear rewired:

We happen to think the result is rather attractive:

Baby Two - pink or blue?

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:51:25 -0500

Well we decided yesterday not to find the answer to that question whilst having our 20 week scan. It's not all that relevant in light of the news that all is 100% healthy.

At one point the sonographer had trouble getting a view of one of the baby's hands as it was behind the head. The comment was made that this is usually a parental trait. Moments later I discovered myself leaning on their comfortable couch watching the big-screen view of our next child, arm behind my head comfortable on the wall.

I've got some video to come once I edit it down, and also a "4D" (hate that name) picture that they did all as part of the excellent service. We have a printout of this to stare at, however for me at least it's still not very real that come August our family expands by one!

Phoebe knows that there's a baby in mummy's tummy, but hasn't really grasped what that might mean to her life we think.

Now of course I have to choose from twice as many baby names and come up with two short-lists!

Land Update

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:49:17 -0600

We're spending a reasonably amount of time just mowing our block of land, and the associated bills with no real benefit are driving us to focus on saving to move on there!

The first structure went up some time ago - I built a compost bin! Compost is rather difficult to move between properties, so our previous two have been left with a nice supply thanks to all our kitchen waste. There wasn't much point doing that again, so a bit of research and time later, and our land was no longer 5 empty acres.

We've cleared some of the fallen trees and turned it into firewood, discovering our local wildlife in the process.

Not long after we purchased the block, there was of course the question of how to tend so much grass. The answer was served up courtesy of an eBay-ed large commercial ride-on mower (diesel to run on 100% biodiesel, of course!) which we collected from the Hunter Valley thanks to the impressive grunt of the VW and a trailer we decided to buy to do the move ourselves. Both of these have proved great investments, even with a bit of repair work we needed to do to the mower.

Starting this coming week our fencing starts to go up. The neighbor we are sharing the fence with unfortunately started the relationship off on a less-than-optimal note by reneging on a deal we had, however this is hopefully behind us now.

The neighbor on the other side is a far different story - it turns out I used to work with him back at Strathfield Car Radios 13 years ago! One of those real small-world stories, and enough to completely overpower the let-down of the other neighbour. He fenced his block with the help of his father who lives around the corner, running an olive farm. This means he can borrow farming equipment as needed, although yesterday he had broken his slasher. The fact that he was slashing at given he has sheep on there shows just how much the recent rain has made the grass grow. Our block has sure taken some mowing in recent times!

For the fencing we have to clear out a section of odd fenced garden that is mostly in our property but goes into the block next door which we want to separate ourselves from with the fence, this is tomorrow's task.

The back fence is somewhat intact so we've asked the fencer to keep what he can to help keep our costs down, and I spent some time clearing away the blackberries and other overgrowth from the farm behind us with another new piece of gardening equipment we're going to need - a petrol whipper-snipper (using our electric one when the nearest power point we own is 3-4km away was proving a little difficult).

We have decided for reasons of cost not to fence the front for now, instead waiting for a final decision on where our driveway is to go (there's a drainage ditch which if we are careful we can drive across but this won't work in the long-term for delivery trucks, etc.)

Once that is done, we're pretty much done with the first phase of our project - get land and boundaries established. After that, the next phase begins - Services - where we get power, sewerage, water, hot water and phone available on the block in preparation for the following phase. This will be when we put up the barn with kitchenette, bathroom, heating, etc., then back in the caravan we purchased as cheap bedrooms and kitchen that we can sell later (currently sitting outside our rental property), and move onto our land!

Current hopeful plan has us there in spring, after the new baby comes along. We could be there far earlier but have to pace our spending according to our earnings.

I have a flickr set called Build on Razorback where I'm putting pictures of the process, and am also working on a more specific website to showcase our crazy plans as they evolve.

Another Gould is Brewing

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:09:32 -0600

I'm most excited to announce that Phoebe will have a little brother or sister come mid-August!!

We've just returned from the 12-week scan with an all-clear verdict, and as such can now stop biting tongues and being secretive. How exciting and amazing! The little wriggler was tossing and turning in mummy's tummy, arms and legs flailing - a family trait Phoebe has certainly carried out to the outside world with her.

Depending on how you measure it, we're either looking at the first or second week of August as the due date, although nature of course will decide that for us. Booked in for care at the small Camden hospital and birth at the larger Campbelltown hospital - hopefully in the Birth Centre again which we felt very comfortable with last time.

This is a great moment for us as a family, because just like many more people than you would be aware of, we have had two miscarriages before making it this far. Society doesn't have a place in polite conversation for such things, but all we really wanted was to talk to other people who had experienced the same and understand that it's all ok. I feel strongly that we should be mentioning it so that people know two babies didn't make it to the world, and such that others who experience the same thing can know they are not alone.

Current thinking is that we may not find out the gender this time around (last time we knew, but nobody else did), although such plans are subject to change at our next scan when we can find out!

Merry Christmas

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:36:21 -0600

Here's a belated Christmas post with some updates on our life.
Phoebe had a great time on Christmas day, exploring Santa's presents, and those from her parents, grandparents, and other great friends. Having our family together for the day was great - Phoebe really loves being around people she knows.
Favourite presents vary from day to day, but between boxes of Duplo, wooden train set, a play house, and piles of In the Night Garden books and a talking doll, there's plenty of entertainment.

The sale of our land has gone through - pics shortly - and as such we are now planning how to move on there and start building as soon as possible. Our current rental property being only five minutes away has turned out to be basically the only positive of it - the previous tenants' seven puppies appear to have left a legacy of an impressively robust flea population. These things are sent to challenge us.

Since we now own the land and are planning to get into temporary accommodation there quickly, we've decided not to do much unpacking here (hence the boxes in the picture). Exactly what form this accommodation will take is still up for discussion, but we may yet become trailer trash :)

Lots of recent pics up in the usual location.

Happy Second Birthday Phoebe!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:51:19 -0600

So our little girl is two today. Wow.

Recent progress means that she is now largely sleeping through the night, perhaps with just a wake for a drink or nappy change. What a difference from the Phoebe of old!

She has also largely opted to toilet train herself in the last two weeks, such that for the last few days she only wears nappies at night time or when going out. Around the house she's happy to wander off and find the potty and look after herself!

Her speech is amazing, understanding so much that we say, stringing long sentences together, and comprehending more and more complex topics daily. A real little knowledge sponge, and so much more than either of us expected from a two year old.

Right now the cute little thing is in front of me playing with her new kitchen - birthday present from Liz and I. All the little girls we know seem to have managed to get these for their second birthdays but in defense of our originality we bought this one months ago!

We're celebrating with family today and friends on Saturday at the zoo, all of which I'm sure she'll love.

We love you so much little Phoebe, and look forward to watching you continue to grow over the years.

A Very Young Woman

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:30:33 -0500

Uploading the latest batch of photos has given me a chance as doting father to view Phoebe's recent rate of progress, which I thought I'd share here for those who may be interested.

Phoebe recently graduated from her first swimming class! I was there camera in hand to catch the first time she decided to let go of Liz and swim only assisted by her bubble. The next lesson she was approached to move up to the next class - making Liz's time in the (at times poorly heated) pool through all worth it.

Silly smiles are now available on demand, which is an amusing way to spend your time with her. Recent simultaneous sickness for her and Liz has meant more time than we'd like watching TV, but at least - like right now in fact - it's the amusing for young and old Shaun the Sheep that is most requested. In fact yesterday she managed to find a disc, turn on and open the DVD player, replace the existing disc and then ask for us to do the rest. Given the number of buttons on the home entertainment gear I'm very impressed. She did get the disc upside-down, but hey, that's just details.

Sentences at the moment are two nouns and a verb (eg. "Dadda eat cheese. Phoebe eat cheese too!") which is pretty good, and improving every day. She can pick shapes quite well, knowing stars, circles, squares, hearts, etc., which she has learned through being the second person in the house eyeing off my iPhone. There's lots of great baby entertaining apps available for it which helps out amusing a curious and easily-bored toddler. She picked up plurals with no help from us, although it highlights just how broken English is when she says "one sheep, two sheeps", but she's wrong.
Favourite things at the moment include swings and slides (which she can spot a mile away), swimming, walking, and learning new words which are quickly parroted back at us, such as "pine cones", yesterday.

Every day is a new adventure with our little girl, and she's not even two yet. Mind-blowing.

Reunited, Land, Fires, Family

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:05:56 -0500

I'm absolutely overjoyed to have my girls back home again! They returned safely Friday morning (no thanks to Malaysian Airlines' website with wrong times on it, nor the airline in general with indifferent service and poor treatment). The trip was a great success, with them visiting friends and family in many parts of England. Photos to follow once I've seen them first :)

It's been a rather busy weekend since then, starting with me getting to know Phoebe again. I'm so happy that she seems much more attached to me now, perhaps absence makes even the young hearts grow fonder. It certainly has done for me, for both of them.

While they were away, I went shopping for land to build a house on. Where we are living now is a truly fantastic house, in a great position, but I'm glad we tried out the place before buying because, in ways we almost can't articulate, it's not really "us". It's too ostentatious, not energy or water efficient enough, has a tennis court that disagrees with my knees, and which is also part of the problem of the backyard. One acre is big enough to grow food and/or graze animals, but not really when a good deal of that is taken up with a tennis court.

So, we've all but decided that we want to build. I originally was on the lookout for land right in town at Picton, but have branched out across Razorback, which has the benefit of being closer to work, friends and family, and also being cheaper for the same size block. Not to mention that there are much larger blocks available, such as our current favourite that we're researching after I took Liz there and she concurred - 12.5 bushland acres close to a great little Primary School. Phoebe had a great time chasing animals and spotting ducks on the dam, so I'm sure she'll love it there too.

It is however in a bushfire-prone area, but I have new-found confidence that we'll be able to design to cope (and plan to get out) in that worst-case scenario, after yesterday putting out a fire in a neighbour's backyard. They were burning off something or other, and the high winds carried some ashes across into their garden. Nobody home, nor anyone in the house between them and us, so I went in, called the fireies for backup and found that their garden hose just reached long enough to drench the area. If I hadn't have had the day off work, and Liz wasn't home either, then the outcome could have been much worse. Fireies arrived just in time to say "nice work mate, that'll do it" and left a calling card for the owner to get in touch with them.

Burning-off is crazy at the best of times, but with gale-force winds predicted, and so much dryness around, it's pure idiocy. Luckily Liz had the car packed and Phoebe ready to go for a worst-case scenario. Which we both hope to never see.

Unfortunately that car almost remains packed, with one of my grandmothers suffering a heart-attack up in Nambucca. I'm on the train to work now but might be off for a quick drive up the coast later today or this week, depending on how that progresses. She's stable but heavily impacted last I heard.

So a very eventful weekend, let's see what this week has in store.

Opposite Sides of the World

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:15:00 -0500

Liz and Phoebe are currently in the UK with Liz's mum Margaret, traveling to a memorial service for Margaret's brother who was lost at sea 30 years ago. Having traveled so far they have of course elected to wrap the trip in a month or so re-exploration of the Kingdom.
They've just spent a week in London and have literally just collected a car, off to meet up with Margaret's other brother Peter. I know this because due to the magic of Skype, Dad and I have just had a great video call with Liz, Phoebe and Margaret who purchased a hash brown or two to use McDonalds wifi in Orpington! McDonalds is branching out, not content with being the world's most convenient and locatable chain of public toilets, they now offer free wifi under the same banner!

Anyway, from what I saw on the video, and the great photos Liz has been taking (thanks to Skype's screen sharing), Phoebe is bigger, cleverer and generally having a great time back with her spiritual ancestors in the UK (and some squirrels, ducks and pigeons too). Unfortunately there's still sleep issues and now without me to take over in the middle of the night it's harder on Liz, but they all appear to be having fun.

Of course, I miss them terribly, and while the video is absolutely fantastic it just brings it all to the fore again, and I wish that my girls were back by my side. Yes, I think even in some convoluted way I miss the broken sleep, just because she is my little bubba. She always seems a little confused but generally very happy to see me on the screen once Liz and I get the chat going, and this time with Grandpa too!

Fully Sick

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:05:42 -0500

We're all feeling rather ill with cold-like symptoms (Liz is quick to point out they are not flu-like, and having dealt with suspected swine flue cases in quarrantine at her work I guess she'd know).
This has brought a return to the horrible nights of no Phoebe sleep, although worse because she screams for her mum who herself needs about a week of sleep.
We're mostly through this, having had Phoebe sleep through from 7:30 until 4am today, which is a huge improvement so we aren't complaining (much). Unfortunately we've missed a few occasions due to not wanting to go anywhere to spread our nasties around - sorry those we had to cancel with.
There are recent pictures added, with more coming soon (especially now that my new Macbook has a built in SD card slot, and I'm having a great deal of fun with the new 35mm 1.8 Nikkor lens ! ).

Naked DSL Exposed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:16:52 -0500

Naked DSL, for those who are not aware, is an impressive-sounding piece of technology that promises to free you of expensive phone bills.

In summary, since you can now run Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) phones which actually route your phone calls over the internet rather than the phone system, the next logical thing to look at is why have a "normal" phone at all? However, today you need a phone line to run your DSL connection over.

So, you pay say $30 to Telstra to give you a phone line, then $30-60 to your DSL provider for bandwidth, and then run free phone calls over the top of that.

See that $30 number at the start? It's paying for a phone line with the ability to make phone calls, which you now no longer need.

Enter Naked DSL. It's just a raw phone line no longer capable of making phone calls, it is naked in the sense that all it can do is host a DSL session. Cost savings abound.

This much information you can find out anywhere else online, such as most Naked DSL provider's websites. This far I had read before deciding to save the mother-in-law some money and set her up with a connection through iiNet - itself a nightmare but the root cause goes deeper than that.

The core problem with Naked DSL in Australia is that Telstra techs don't understand it.

Four times now she has been disconnected by Telstra (NOT iiNet) who, when probing around in either the local junction box or the exchange for free lines to connect other customers, find hers, and perform their standard check of whether a line is available - look for a dial tone.

But, from the brief explanation above, you will probably summise that Naked DSL does not have a dialtone!.

So, techs disconnect her, connect some other now-happy customer insted, and move on. Our poor heroine in this story is left with no DSL connection, a DSL provider who correctly insists that they have done nothing, and, for kicks, no phone to even call and complain.

Once for this to happen is excessive - especially when iiNet insisted that the end-user had to change the modem, check all the cabling, find the non-existent MFD on site, etc. etc. This took a month and a half.

The second time I was furious, but it only took them a week to get her reconnected. Each time now it takes a few days, but to get through to them takes a long mobile phone call or two, and then a report from iiNet to Telstra, which they act on lazily, in their own time, despite it being their techs and outdated practices which caused the ungodly mess in the first place.

Despite the cost savings, I simply can't recommend Naked DSL today. I told this to a few friends who signed up anyway. Last I spoke to one of them, the exact same thing had just happened to him...

Our Little Toddler

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:58:21 -0500

Trying to break the blogging drought, bear with me!

The rest of our driving trip (photos here) went really well - a few weeks driving north along the coast, getting as far as Harvey Bay, then a couple of days quick drive home inland. All the while Phoebe just loved all the new places we stayed, things to see, pretty much everything really except the beach (she loves pools, but not sand). Car went well - a packed station wagon returned 6.0 l/100km for the trip!

Phoebe's sleeping has really improved to the point where I'd call it 'normal' from what I hear other parents' experiences are - most nights sleeping fine from 6 or 7 through to 6-ish in the morning. Some times she wakes for a drink, but settles back quickly. We still envy the parents who tell us "wow, well our baby slept through from two weeks!". So happy it was that easy for them, but, well, life had something different planned for us.

Now she's a competent climber, runner, and parrot. Her talking is also getting more understandable, with her recent favourite word being "More!". This is still cute since it's usually more food - and remember how long she wasn't interested in that for? What a change!

Easter was fun for her - both as the Easter Bunny at home, and then for her first trip to the Easter Show, accompanied by the grandparents. (Grandpa took these photos).

We've recently weaned Phoebe too - quite late by modern Western standards it seems.

On The Road Again

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:22:56 -0500

I'm writing this after watching the sunrise over Coffs Harbour - we're taking my belated Christmas Holidays and seeing some of our beautiful country.

Thus far we've stopped in some obvious and not-so-obvious places with the rough goal of visiting friends in Brisbane and then turning around again. Our parents have taken the opportunity to borrow our house and live in the country for a little while - good for them!

We were a bit apprehensive about how Phoebe would cope with the travel - but we shouldn't have worried. She's fantastic in the car, loves exploring the rooms each night, and delights in finding familiar things like her bag of toys amongst the sea of new experiences.

As for sleep, well that's improved out of sight in the last two months, but is still a challenge at times - as evident from the fact that I've been up an hour now and Liz had a very broken night's sleep. Compared to where we were for over a year with her waking randomly every hour or so though, it's a world of difference. Most nights she now sleeps through from 7-9 through to about 6:30 with either no or only minor wakings due to a lost dummy or similar. We've seen how bad it can be, and this is heaven!

Traveling, we have no fixed plans each day - perhaps to Byron Bay tonight, stopping at a few interesting sounding little places we've heard of but never been to. On the way south from Brisbane (or as far as we get with cyclones approaching) we'll most likely take the inland road to see some of the great country towns there.

Pictures are all here.

A real Aussie BBQ

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:18:22 -0600

Our old house has natural gas, but now, out in a country town, a little way out of town, we don't even have sewerage let alone gas to the house.

So when we bought a BBQ a couple of years back, we paid up a bit to get one which could be piped into the house, then paid a bit more to get the existing piping extended to the BBQ area. When we moved, we brought our shiny expensive BBQ with us, but couldn't connect it to anything!

A further problem was the lack of a built-in stand, so after months of waiting we finally got the proper cart thing the other day, and I spent a few hours putting the impressive piece of engineering together. A quick run to Bunnings later, I had the adapter cable to run the thing on bottled gas instead of town gas, and yesterday evening, just in time for Australia Day, the moment of truth arrived - most of a summer without a BBQ was coming to a glorious end!

And what glory it is - the natural gas conversion on the bbq widens the gas outlets to about 2.5 times the size they normally are for bottled gas. The net effect of this is that having the bbq on bottled gas turned up even half way causes glorious jets of flame to shoot through the grill. Full-power will char-grill your steak in about a minute, and empty your bottle shortly thereafter.

So, we have an overclocked BBQ, violating several safety regulations but capable of heating the hotplate in 1 minute instead of 10.

Happy Australia Day!

PS: Phoebe is walking everywhere now, there's no stopping her!

Tentative Steps

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:16:43 -0600

I'll end my blogging apathy by announcing that yesterday Liz put Phoebe down on her feet with me a couple of meters away and our little daughter took about three steps towards me unassisted before tripping on a toy.

It was amazing to be there and see it - considering how much she's been progressing recently and the amount of time I've been away from home with work I thought for sure I'd miss the first steps, but no - there they were, right towards me.

We couldn't coax any more out of her - it must be hard getting the right leg muscles to work at the right time - but they'll come thick and fast now.

Our little girl is certainly growing up - the number of words she recognises is huge, and she can say plenty of different things in responses to different situations.

On our trip up to Dubbo a while back we took her for her first swim which she screamed no matter how we approached it. Yesterday after "the first steps" and me cycling home in 39.3 degree heat we all went down to Picton pool, where she loved every second of it - jumping in, climbing out, throwing balls, swimming with us both.

Now she just has to learn to sleep consistently and we'll be on track 100%! I'm pretty happy with the 95% we have right now though, and so glad that we have her in our lives.

If you missed them, there's updated pictures and videos online too.

Happy Birthday Phoebe!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:03:38 -0600

(It was actually Wednesday, but there was so much happening I didn't get near the computer all day)

So our little girl is one now, what a great achievement - both for her to make it this far and for Liz especially to have made it through the rollercoaster of highs and lows it's been this last year.

She's very close to walking now, but interested in everything, great at throwing, babbling, climbing, and knows some words such as "mum", "ball", "dad", "dog", "woolly" (one of her books) and "bear", with more being added each day.

It's great after working such long hours to come home and see her smiling face, it makes everything all worth it. We even almost got to the point of declaring the sleep fixed last week after a week and a half of wonderful nights (by that I mean maybe up three times, but settling easy), but then just before her birthday she decided in her determined little way to remind us of how it used to be! It's still a bumpy ride, this parenthood thing.

She received some wonderful toys and of course lots of cuddles from her family on the day, which I had managed to get off work. In the morning we went to playgroup as a little family with Margaret too, and I made it "music day", taking both her and my guitar along, plus lots of percussion instruments that I've got at our place at the moment. The kids had a ball, clapping and singing, shaking and hitting, it's really a heart-lifting experience after busy times focused on ultimately irrelevant computers at work.

We have a party planned for tomorrow at our new house which lots of people can hopefully come along to. Liz has made great progress, but there's still too much tidying up to do both this afternoon and in the morning, so no mucking around! I'm sure Phoebe will help out in her own wonderful way, either trying to unplug the vacuum cleaner, or helpfully re-arranging Mummy's careful arranging.

Love you Phoebe, congratuations on your first year and I miss you so much when I'm at work. Can't wait to get home!

PS: I'm on the train at Menangle Park and a bunch of horses just ran past getting some exercise for the trots at the paceway here no doubt. The country is fun!

The Picton Experiment

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:58:45 -0500

So we're moving to Picton!

Starting in a few weeks we'll have vacated our little Penshurst house which has been a great first home, and moved all our belongings to a strange new rural place. We're calling this an experiment because we like to have ways back out of unfamiliar places, so we're renting a house down there and going to put our Penshurst house up for rent too. This way if we change our minds after a little while (probably six months to match the lease durations), we can move back and say "experiment completed, conclusion negative".

However at this point we're all super-excited and think that this is the place for us for a good while yet. More posts on the reasoning and the actual house we've chosen coming soon. As well as a house-warming of course!

For now it's crazy packing time, plus organising everything for two houses at the same time, oh and of course Liz is going back to work shortly and Phoebe still challenges us with her on-again, off-again sleeping and eating habits.

We must be crazy, but sometimes in life you have to be a bit daring and hope it pays off.

Everywhere

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:01:00 -0500

The house is now routinely in chaos when I return home from work, as Phoebe is crawling everywhere rapidly, and can climb to stand on most objects.

For a while there I was joking that at least she hadn't tried to use my leg hairs for this purpose. And then she did. I joke about this no longer.

She seems to have decided that food isn't the root of all evil and will eat many things at her own pace, far more often. We're still hesitant to call it a meal, because it's far from the recommended amount, but it is a significant improvement on even a couple of weeks ago.

Sadly, the sleep issues continue. There are clear improvements at times, but almost every night there's still a period of many hours where she just doesn't want to sleep. We're booked into Tresillian again next month so if she doesn't keep improving on her own then we'll all get a bit of a helping hand.

There are always more pictures being uploaded, and there is plenty more stuff I want to blog about but I just keep forgetting it! Perhaps I need to get the mobile blogging client working so all that time I'm on a packed train when these things come to my head I can be writing them instead.

A Returning Nurse

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:16:48 -0500

Liz's twelve months of maternity leave is rapidly drawing to an end, which has prompted us to think about how we are going to handle it.

There are a number of factors that make this quite a challenging task:

Phoebe still doesn't eat solids in any measurable way. Now that she's crawling (and standing) all over the place, she's burning through energy like mad and breastfeeding more often again.
Phoebe still doesn't sleep properly. A good night means up twice, a bad night could be a few hour long block, followed by up several more times. This is currently compounded by factor one and the temporary problem that all three of us have colds.
Liz doesn't really want to go back to work, although she misses some aspects of it, such as her friends.

SMH today have an article that neatly sums up one of my concerns:

The bureau's report found that from 1996 to 2006, police-recorded incidents of assault at hospitals across the state have increased from 214 to 322.
In more than two-thirds of the assaults, the victim was a stranger and was most often either a hospital staff member or police officer.

I've never found this even remotely acceptable, but for Liz it's been just part of the job - mentally ill people who don't know what they are doing get away with physically abusing staff. It's largely tolerated because there's not much that can be done.

It's a very tough problem and one that's come back to my mind now that we have a small child still wholly dependent on Liz to think about. She has on occasion suffered this herself, and it's always worried me greatly.

But for now she'll most likely go back one day a week, hopefully a good day where positive things happen, but that's not something we can count on unfortunately.

Life Will Never Be The Same Again

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:14:04 -0500

Nine Months!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:16:01 -0500

We could have had another baby in that time! Not that Liz would approve of that plan :)

So little Miss Phoebe is going pretty well really. We still have ongoing sleep issues, which seem to sort themselves out for a few days where she surprises us, but then that's followed by nights where she's refusing to sleep for three or four hours straight.

A good night is currently Liz up feeding twice where Phoebe goes straight back to sleep, and a bad night is up ten times or more, and/or where some of those times Phoebe just wants to be awake. The evenings are typically very challenging, although there's signs of improvement there as well.

But that said, when she's awake, Phoebe is happy and enjoying life most of the time. There's screamy days and happy days, but it looks like the latter are finally outweighing the former. Phoebe loves to look at what we are doing, play with anything, grab things, smile at everyone, and try and get to the dog.

Crawling is still almost there, but constant reliable forward motion still escapes her. She can do it, but it just takes a little while for her to remember how. She loves to walk (assisted of course) so that may come sooner than we expect if she can work out how.

Funnest games include peek-a-boo, flying around, tickling, and funny moving faces. Her laugh is truly wonderful if you can work out how to coax it out of her!

So it's taken a while, and not quite there yet, but we're truly enjoying being parents now. I miss them both so much when I'm away for long days at work, especially on the worst days when I leave before Phoebe wakes and return after she's slept. Luckily for me, she's usually awake again soon, but that's not good for other reasons.

We envy those parents with babies that just sleep twelve hours a day from birth - Liz sleeps maybe five hours some days and Phoebe perhaps seven, but I wouldn't trade either of them, especially since Liz kindly lets me get more sleep than her so that I can face the long working days. This is helped though by the fact that at times Phoebe screams for her mum and won't have a bar of me!

It's quiet in here

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:20:49 -0500

So make sure you aren't missing out on the updates which are happening pictorially via my Flickr Photostream.

The first additional lens has turned up for our new camera - a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D.

One of the things I've always love and missed since I last had a (film) SLR is shallow depth-of-field, like in this picture of Alina or this one of Dad and Phoebe. You just can't get that with point-and-shoot, and you get less of it with the 18-55 kit lens that came with our camera which only goes down as low as f/3.5.

On our D40 the 50mm lens manual-focus only - it's great fun getting back to that sort of raw photography. It's also great for low light - I've never been a fan of flash and this makes it unnecessary in many situations.

A 55-200mm telephoto should be arriving on Monday, giving pretty much a full versatile set of lenses for most occasions.

R.I.P. Claude Williams

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:34:57 -0500

At just over ninety years of age, on Monday morning the world lost:

The greatest of great-grandfathers to Phoebe. I'm so glad they met.
The best grandfather to myself and my brother Peter.
The adopted grandfather to Liz, who lost her own many years ago.
Beloved father to my mother Helen, and father-in-law to my father Neil.
Husband to Helen's mother Marjorie, who as a couple were the most ideal Grandparents anyone could have ever asked for. I'm amazed how well she is holding up.
A founding member of Bexley Golf Club, where he taught me a love of the game, and patiently attempted with little success to pass on even a quarter of his skill.
A great billiards player, which has helped me win more pub pool than you can poke a cue at.
A World-War Two Veteran, serving his country in a way so few do today.
A more than capable multi-instrumentalist, able to play guitar, saxophone, clarinet and mouth organ by ear even with failing sight. These skills were passed to me, and now the instruments themselves follow as we often discussed.
A gentleman in the true sense of the word - I have never met any that compare on this point. Until the last he would stand for you and make you comfortable, passing across food and drink he himself could no longer even see.
A man capable of holding a coherent, articulate discussion with people 10% of his age, unlike many others of his generation.
A man who's mind and soul outlived their mortal vessel. And they will continue to do so.

Funeral is 11am tomorrow, Friday 18th, at Rockdale.

It goes without saying that he will be sorely, sorely missed.

Crawling! (*)

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:57:52 -0500

(*) But backwards, we're still working on forwards.

I think it's pretty cool, as Liz commented this morning it must be weird to suddenly have mobility after seven months of life. It was fun this morning watching her move all around the lounge floor, even if she doesn't really control where she goes yet - just a matter of time though!

OK, so my arm is reasonable. The ortho surgeon guy, despite being a surgeon, said no surgery is required - that's really the main thing I wanted to hear. Just some exercises a few times a day and it should heal up, just a millimeter or so off where it should be. Apparently there's enough tolerance in our joints that that's not at all a problem.

Still sore though, especially when people bump into it on a packed train. I have a sling but despite trying I can't make it comfortable and it's far from convenient so am not normally wearing it.

Blue Mountains trip

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:41:31 -0500

We got back yesterday from a great long weekend away staying in a house in Wentworth Falls with friends Sarah, Derek and Pearl. It was quite a lot of fun as an over-sized family and a great place to stay.
The photos tell most of the story, but highlights include:

Nice well-renovated two-story house with lots of heating, almost too much. A pleasant change to our previous trip away!
Phoebe mostly behaving herself and sleeping at reasonably sensible hours. I said mostly.
Not thinking about work.
Being out of Sydney in the fresh cool air, yet it only took us 45 minutes to get home (from Glenbrook)
Derek and I competing in the Woodford to Glenbrook mountain bike ride.
Me not breaking anything too serious, although I have some nasty grazes and a very sore arm which will need X-raying.
Derek and I having sole custody of the young ladies for a few hours, taking them to the Leura Toy and Railway museum, which I'd describe as an impressive house and gardens filled with an interesting array of old toys and a poorly-displayed collection of model railways.
Playing with the new camera
A break from the dog. But we missed her!

Robertson

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:32:23 -0500

I'm in the middle of a week off work (well earned, in my humble opinion!), and one of the things we wanted to do was have a couple of days break from Sydney.

A big of searching landed us with Robertson, a small town half-way between Bowral and the coast. We'd stopped there on a steam train ride and despite the horrendous rain that day (Robertson has a huge annual rainfall) we had fond memories of it.

After discounting most of the accommodation (why are Aussie B&Bs so expensive??), we landed on the huge old manor of the town, Fountaindale. This is known to most people we've mentioned the trip to as Ranleigh House, which it was called for most of its life. I sold it to Liz as coming across a bit like Fawlty Towers, and once we arrived, we found I was more correct that we had hoped I would be!

It wasn't bad, but for the prices they charge (lucky we were getting a hefty discount) you'd expect heating in the rooms. Especially when you arrive with a six month old and my wife who would probably have preferred to be on the coast somewhere very very warm :)

The charm of the place would have been great in its day, but it needs some serious work to compete - we won't be returning unles they do some major work.

Anyway, the town was nice enough - one pub, a few cafés, galleries, etc. Disturbingly many places recently closed for business though, which is never good to see in a small town.

I'd taken the bike and set off one afternoon when the weather permitted for a ride up the little-used railway line. Fountaindale actually had it's own station, which would have been a grand way to arrive back in 1924 when it was first built.

On the way back home yesterday we stopped at the newly-opened Illawarra Fly treetop-walk. This was quite a bit of fun, although not one for the vertigo-afflicted!

All three of us had a great time walking around, even when it was rather high up! They'd done a reasonable job of making it fit in with the surroundings, and it's all sustainably done with water tanks, no flashy signs, etc. Worth a visit if you're in the area, for the great views across to the coast, and the chance to bounce the cantilever sections to annoy those not big fans of heights in your group :)

Phoebe slept mostly in her porta-cot, and some times with us in the King-sized bed, which was a pleasant bonding experience for us.

A Tooth!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:09:17 -0500

Exciting for the parents, weird for Phoebe when it's not hurting her, pretty damn un-impressive for her when it is.

Must be so strange to have your first tooth popping through, think about it for a second.

Rolling Over

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:04:55 -0500

Just a quick post because last night Phoebe managed to roll herself over! (I know, if you're not a parent, it's not exciting. Don't worry, I used to feel the same.)

From her back to her front, during her 'nappy-off' time when she's quite a bit more mobile, but obviously a little more care needs to be taken by us parents during this time!

More pics online from Therese and Antony's excellent wedding at Luna Park too. Best Wishes to them both and congratulations on a great day. Thanks for including Phoebe.