Lilly Ann Clark was born to Mike and Amanda on 29th December at 5:58pm. 
Mandy had a 20 something hour labour but the little one still wouldn't come due to various complications and eventually Lilly was delivered via caesarian. She was 3.8 kg (8 lb, 6 ounces) and is 53 cm long (which is very long).
She is very cute .. there are some photos attached with a couple of happy grand parents.
Mother and baby are doing well ... Michael is okay too.
Meeks and I felt the baby kick or move or something for the first time last night. I was able to put my hand on her belly and feel it kicking around. Apparently it went on for quite a while! That was really exciting for both of us.
Amanda still hasn't had her baby yet. It's a few days over due, but doesn't look like it is in any hurry to come out.
I hope everyone had a good and restful Christmas and are looking forward to a Happy New Year.
Here are a couple of pictures of our baby.
First picture is the classic profile. We think the baby has Meeks' nose.
The second picture is a hand and foot.
We had our 20 week ultrasound today and the news is all good. We got to see the little one's hands and feet and face and heart and kidneys and brain and stomach etc. Everything was normal and healthy. This is obviously a huge relief for us and wonderful answer to prayer. Thank you to everyone praying for us.
We didn't want to find out the sex, so we don't know if it is a little boy or girl. Whatever it is, it is very cute - it riggled around a lot and at one point straightened it's leg out. We got a few little pictures and a video of parts of the ultrasound so I'll be posting the pictures some time tonight.
Obviously, we are thrilled. Half way there!
On a different note, my brother Michael and his wife Mandy are due Christmas Eve. Apparently the baby is engaged, but is quite comfortable and has more room to grow so they don't expect my little niece or nephew before the due date. In any case, he or she will be the first grandchild in the family, so when it decides to make an appearance it will be another great Christmas present.
Now that we have a camera, we can actually put pictures on the blog. Yay! Here is the 7 week ultrasound. I know, old news, but still cool. The baby is 1.37 cm. Very tiny! You can kind of see an arm bud too! Okay so maybe it just looks like a big eye.
We bought a video camera yesterday (it's a Panasonic NV-GS150 for those who like the details). We bought it through an online company called camerastore.com.au which I can highly recommend. It was 30% less than what you would pay in Retravision, Bing Lee or Harvey Norman. I ordered it online, they rang to confirm the details 15 minutes later and it arrived the next day. Overall a very positive online experience.
It will be fun learning to use it! As well as recording video, it takes 2.3MPixel still images which are really easy to download onto the PC so we will actually be able to get photos on this blog. I'm very excited about that. Unfortunately to do video editing we will need an upgrade of the computer, nothing major, just new operating system, new hard drive, more memory, DVD burner, USB 2.0, and Firewire card ... okay maybe we'll just have to get a new PC it is 5 and a half years old after all! Depends on the finances I guess!
After securing our U2 tickets we went baby furniture and Christmas present shopping (we had the day off - yay!). We started at Ikea and saw a nice single seater couch for the baby room as well as a cot, change table and cupboard which would fit well in the little one's room. After that we went to a couple of other baby places and despite being overwhelmed by the variety and prices we managed to retain our sanity and not actually buy anything - it was really only intended as a bit of a fact finding mission - just to see if our budget was going to be adequate.
I guess the scariest thing is prams - you can spend $900 on a pram! Is it just me or is that ridiculous? Needless to say that one isn't on the list. Most of them seem to be in the range $250-$500 or so dollars for the three wheeler ones. I guess we'll get one somewhere in the lower range. Does any one have any advice out there? Feel free to leave comments!
The other bizarre thing is baby seats, they all seem to have this incredibly plush dark material in them. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't baby vomit white (at least initially) and therefore will show up even more, not to mention the fact that being dark fabric is going to make it incredibly hot in summer.
Aside from being concerned by prices, we had a fun day shopping for baby stuff and finished our Christmas shopping, so that is a relief!
We took the day off to try and get U2 tickets yesterday. For those of you who don't know, they sold out 70,000 tickets in a little over and hour. We tried to get on to Ticketek on the internet and via the phone for 90 minutes yesterday and didn't get through once. Fortunately we had registered for Mastercard Applause, Mastcard's preferred ticket thing, and were able to get a package through them which includes B Reserve tickets and a pre-concert cocktail party at Star City. So we have tickets yay!
