Mitch has a cold :(

The little man has had a nasty cold the last couple of days. Yesterday he was in a very bad way, poor little guy. Blocked or runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing, vomiting, pooing. Add to that he wasn't able to sleep, so was crying a lot of the time. It was all very hard for mummy to handle seeing her little guy looking and feeling so sick and not being able to do anything about it. He doesn't know why he feels terrible!

Fortunately, he slept most of last night and has better sleeps today and is looking a bit better. Hopefully soon he'll be better.

I have a bunch of pictures to put on as well, but the picture handling is not working at the moment, so it might have to wait.

Mitch and monkey

Mitch and monkey evidentally made up after Mitch got caught playing with the purple dinosaur. Who can stay mad at Mitchy? Not me, that's for sure.

Monkey is great fun ...


And he's good to chew on ...


And after a big, long game and you're a bit tired he's good for a cuddle too!

Some uncalled for excitement

After squash on Monday night I came home and had a shower and sat down on the couch to watch TV. Nothing unusual there. Later on I got up and went in to the computer room and had an episode. I started to see jaggy red and blue and green lines in my vision and I couldn't focus on anything and started sweating and had extreme nausea. I was seeing flashes before my eyes, primarily in my right eye, so I feared I must have been having some further problem with the retina after the squash injury weeks ago. The flashing ws gone 15 minutes or so later but Meeks and I went off to hospital while Meeks mum minded Mitch, to get it checked out just in case. After waiting three and half hours I finally saw a doctor at 3am. He was pretty useless and said that since the symptoms had reduced (I was still feeling nauseous) and had a headache I should see the Retina specialist the next day.

To make a long story short, I saw the Retina Specialist today and he said I'd had an opthalmic migraine. I'd never had one before so it was a new and unpleasant experience for me, but still, better than a detached retina! You'd think the doctor in an emergency ward could have diagnosed a migraine!

Anyway, back to normal now, that's a relief.

In other news congratulations to our friends Catriona and Andrew on the birth of their little son Matthew. He was born today and mother and baby are doing well. Mitch is going to have a little mate to play with.

Mitch does the groceries

Daddy and Mitch went shopping on Sunday for the groceries while Mummy was visiting Nana. Mitch got to ride in the baby seat on the top of the shopping trolley while daddy wheeled around.

When we finally got to the check out Mitch was very happy.

More pictures

Mitch used to be so little, and took up so little of the cot, now he sleeps with his arms flat out. It's very cute.

At the Mother's group Meeks goes to, Mitch is the only boy. He has his pick of the ladies :) It's funny they look like they're all dancing!

Mitch slept through again last night. He didn't wake up until I got up and had a shower at 7am. That was after he went to bed about 8pm last night. Meeks is loving the sleep. I wonder if he'll let us both sleep in tomorrow morning?

Some pictures

First up, an older one. Mitch had this little Pilot Ted jumpsuit which was very cute. It even had a song which Meeks made up! Mitch has grown out of Pilot Ted now. Apparently Mitch is showing off some asymetric arm bending thing which is interesting to OTs and physios.


This next one is not a great photo (it's a bit out of focus) but it's pretty funny!


In this last one Mitch looks he's been sprung giving the little dinosaur a cuddle. I hope his Monkey (see earlier post) isn't jealous!

Mitch slept through again last night, in fact he only woke up and started crying when Daddy's alarm went off at 6:45! Daddy doesn't like his alarm clock either.

Sleeping through

The last couple of nights Mitch has slept through the night. What a delight! Monday night he slept from about 7pm until 6am. Tuesday night he slept from about 7:30pm until 5:30am. Meeks and I still woke up during the night both nights, but Mitch didn't. What a good boy! What a great way to celebrate your three month birthday. Bizarre to think he is 3 months old today, it has gone so fast.

Meeks had her last time at the parent's class yesterday. As Mitch is more than 12 weeks old, he has officially graduated from that group. Meeks will still be getting together with the ladies she has met for walks and they will form Mother's group type of thing once their babies are all more than 12 weeks. The other ladies baked and had a little party to celebrate Mitch's graduation. Meeks was very touched.

When Mitch graduated he was 6.4kg and 61cm. When he was born he was 3.78 kg and 50.5cm so he's done a lot of growing in 3 months. He looks much bigger than he did. I was looking at photos on the weekend of how little of his cot he took up when he was born. Admittedly back then he slept all wrapped up in a little bundle and now he sleeps flat on his back with his arms open wide.

I'll post some more photos in the next couple of days. They are both new and old from Meeks phone, some very cute ones on there!

PC Problems

I suppose it is my own fault ... I upgraded our PC to Windows XP on Saturday morning. It all seemed to be working fine. Then Sunday morning it wouldn't boot ... or rather every time it did it would get to the "Welcome" screen and reboot itself then it would run a chkdsk and complain about bad sectors and dodgy data. I did what every person would do and panic, wondering when the last time I'd backed up all the precious data on the PC. Not since about a week after Mitch was born d'oh!

Fortunately after about 3 hours of messing around I managed to get it all going again (with a fresh install of Windows XP) and burned some more back up disks. Phew! All is okay. It seems the hard drive has some dodgy sectors and the Windows XP upgrade installed over those dodgy sectors so when it went to boot, all hell broke loose. Anyway, I did some more shopping today and bought a new hard drive and a couple of other bits and pieces (USB 2.0 and Firewire combo card) for those of you who want to know, so we will be able to connect our mobiles and the video camera to the PC and maybe even do some video editing although I'd need a whole new PC to do it properly ... don't tempt me ... maybe next year!

Actually it has been a computery weekend. Mum baby sat Mitch on Saturday which allowed Meeks and I to go on our first date (yay!) since the little guy was born. We went and saw Click at the movies. Quite entertaining, if a little unnecessarily and overly crude in a few places, though it did have a helpful message. As payment I fixed Mum's virus and spyware ridden laptop. Thank goodness for free products like ZoneAlarm, AVG Anti-virus, AdAware and SpyBot. For any of you people thinking about installing Norton Antivirus on a laptop running Windows XP with only 256Mb of RAM, let me give you some advice ... DON"T DO IT! Now she can connect to the family wireless network again and browse the three sites she visits - Yahoo for her email, Google and of course this little site. Hi mum!

Mitch is doing well. He slept from about 8pm last night until 5am this morning. What a good boy! He was of course ravenous when he woke up and pretty much inhaled his bottle. He's smiling a lot more readily now, which is just so cute. He is just starting to make sounds which aren't grizzles although each time he does he looks like he has just surprised himself and wonders how he did it and what he has to do to do it again. He's almost making a laughing noise, but I'm not sure it's a real laugh. He likes to play the "tongue poking out game". If you poke your tongue out at him he smiles and then tries to do it too. So cute!

Anyway, that's enough for today. No pictures, but I'll get more as soon as the PC at home is back working with the new Hard Drive, etc.

A boy and his Monkey

Before Mitch was born Nana bought him this cute little monkey (among a number of other stuffed annimals). Mitch seems to like him. In fact the monkey is the first toy Mitch has taken an interest in and not surprisingly his mouth is doing most of the investigation! Not that he has much control of what's going on just yet, he sort of just waves his arms around and Monkey's arm ended up giving him a cuddle.



The pictures aren't great quality as they are taken off an MMS. there are slightly better quality ones, but I thought these were too cute to not put on! I just noticed that he's sitting in his rocker and wearing the same outfit as the photos 4 days earlier below. He does actually have more than one outfit, it's just coincidence I assure you!

News for the week

A couple more photos for the new week.



Mitch went for his first bushwalk on Saturday. We walked from near Clifton Gardens down to Bradley's Head. Not a long or strenuous walk (about 30 minutes each way) but as you can see, the weather was beautiful and the views were very picturesque.

Mitch slept most of the walk in pouch on Mummys front, so he missed most of the sights, but he was awake when mummy took him to look at the rocks and sea. It is a little bit weird to think this was the first time he had seen the sand or the water. He wont remember it but we will, which is special.

Mitch is growing more attentive all the time, he's smiling more frequently and likes to poke his tongue out. He is just starting to "get" what his arms are for. He still waves them around wildly which you can see in the photo at the top. The unintended consequence is that he hits himself, his mum, his dad, the chair, and anything else in the process. This morning he was bringing them together in front of him which looked very cute.

Smiley boy photos

Finally we were able to get some photos of Mitch smiling. Admittedly we cheated a bit and videoed him andthen took the photos from the video, but he's still soooooo cute!




In other news Mitch weighed in at a hefty 6.1 kg in clothes today at the mother's group. We were a bit concerned about him losing weight, because he hasn't been too into his food the last few days. Obviously he knew he was over weight and was trying to cut back, mummy and daddy don't know anything!

Mitch had his rotavirus vaccine today. It's a new vaccine that has only just come out. It isn't covered by the PBS yet, but after hearing from various people how sick little people can get with rotavirus we decided to bear the expense and get him vaccinated. Hopefully it save him the distress and us the worry of him getting it later.

Smiley boy x3

Mitch was smiling again this morning. We tried valiantly to take a picture but couldn't get the timing right. Then we tried the video camera and he became more interested in that and forgot to smile. Give it a few more days. He'll get there!

He slept really well last night. He fed at 7pm and then after a big play went to sleep at about 8:30 and stayed asleep until about 2am, then he fed and watched the soccer with Daddy (woe unto the socceroos - okay I've seen softer penalties given and I've seen harsher ones denied) and went back to bed about 3:30 (after Daddy had to clean him up when a poo escaped the nappy). Then he slept until about 7:30 this morning. Mummy didn't know herself after getting most of 10 hours sleep.

New toys

After a few dramas the Dishwasher and hotwater heater were put in and connected yesterday.

The dishwasher needs some carpentry done to make the cupboard fit it properly. I hope my skills are up to it! I just have to reattach the door on the left and put in a little shelf thing. I think I can manage that. It's kind of sad to be so excited about a dishwasher, but after 2 years of washing dishes, we were both pretty sick of it. Especially if you're entertaining. You get to the end of the night and think, "Oh no! Now I have an hour of washing up to do!" either that or you leave it until the morning ... no one wants to wake up to that!

The hotwater heater is super. Apparently they delivered the wrong one, it was bigger than the one we wanted. So anyway, now we're never going to run out of hotwater! It was so nice in the shower this morning having full pressure hotwater, old one used to dribble out. Add to that it has a temperature throttling valve thing which means it never gets hot enough to scald. This is great news with Mitch.

The other toy is my new backpack which I got for my birthday. It's a Booq laptop bag. The idea being that next year when Meeks goes back to work, I will be working from home one day a week and transporting my laptop will be easier. Add to that my brief case was falling apart anyway. The backpack is very cool. Here is a link to the web site. They take their backpacks very seriously!

Smiley Boy x2

At about 5:30 on Sunday morning Mitch smiled at me. I had just finished feeding him and was watching the World Cup and Mitchy gave me this little smile. It was so cute. I cried. It was a beautiful moment :) He did it a couple more times which made his Daddy very happy (and cry some more). We haven't managed to catch him smiling on camera yet, but when we do I'll post it. It is by far the cutest thing he has done. He's been becoming more and more alert and attentive to the world around him. He tracks things that move past him and he looks at some of his toys when they make noise and things, so he's gradually learning to interact with things.

On Friday night he slept from about 8:30pm until 4:30am his longest sleep ever. Meeks and I both woke up about 4am and said, "What's the time? Did you get up and feed him?". It's horrible, but our first thought was, "Is he alright? Has he stopped breathing?". Obviously he hadn't and soon woke up needing a feed. Saturday night he slept for about 6 hours which was great too. Last night he only had about a 5 hours sleep. Hopefully the long sleep wasn't a "fluke" and he'll start sleeping a bit longer in the night.

Meeks is putting together an album of photos of Mitch. Obviously it will be a work in progress as he grows. It looks pretty good so far though.

In other news, I went back to the eye doctor today and was given the all clear on my retina which is great news.

Also today we are getting dishwasher installed, finally, to our great relief. When we bought the house 2 years ago, a dishwasher was one of the top things on our list of things to do. Unfortunately the kitchen has very narrow benches so fitting a dishwasher was going to be difficult. Added to that we'd have to sacrifice a cupboard which were also a precious commodity. Then there was the cost factor. We'll we solved a one problem by getting a new hotwater system which meant removing the indoor one and getting an outdoor one. That meant more cupboard space in the laundry where the old one was. Also we decided we'd just have to live with a dishwasher poking out too far. Hopefully, It will all be finished by the time I get home this evening. If not, maybe the next day. It looks like a big job. There's rerouting of pipes and installing of new pipes and all that sort of stuff.

Anyway, that's all the news for now. Thanks for reading!

Smiley boy

Mitch smiled at Meeks this morning. Daddy wasn't there to see it, but Meeks was very happy. Mitch has developed a liking to sleeping on the couch, which is not great for his sleeping habits, but it's pretty cute anyway!

Mitch has his shots

Mitch had his first round of immunization shots today. The poor little guy. Meeks took him up to the doctor who did the unenviable task. Meeks came home probably more traumatised than Mitch. Poor Meekie! Needless to say we're expecting an "unsettled" night.

Before going to the doctor, Meeks and Mitch went to mother's group and Mitch had a weigh in. He's up over 5kg now in clothes. He'll have an official weigh in at the paediatrician on Thursday before he gets to catch his first train. Meeks and Mitch are coming in to town to have lunch with me because it's my birthday. Yes indeed I will be an old man on Thursday ... well older anyway.

On a different note, how good was Australia winning the soccer last night! It's not often you find me wide awake at 1am in the morning on a work night ... even more unusual was Meeks watching too. Mitch would have been watching but he was asleep ... at least he was until one of us got a little excited at the events unfolding in Germany.

A new name

So I have been a bit lazy in adding Mitch to the name of this blog. So now the blog is Dave&Meeks&Mitch@Home. Same address, just a new name. We still haven't updated our answering machine message, only because we've forgotten how to. I'm sure the instructions are somewhere ...

Sleepy feet

Mitch was having a little nap on the couch

and his little feet were exposed and they were so cute we thought we had to take a photo.

The little man is doing really well. He's growing nicely and this week we are trying him in the sleeping bag rather than all bound up and we are also trying to get him to put himself to sleep. He's doing really well at both ... well so far today anyway. The sleeping bag is good because when he was swaddled he'd get his arms free and either whack himself in the face or get cold arms or both and it would wake him up. He should be old enough now to put himself to sleep and as much as we like cuddling him, and as hard as it is to hear him cry, we know it is better for all of us if he learns to put himself to sleep. Today it's been okay and he cries on and off for 20 minutes and then goes to sleep.

Tomorrow mum is much busier with parent's group and a visit to the Smart's to see Aly and Maddie and Andrew and then we're going to hear a guest speaker at the church in the night. Hopefully all that wont make him over-tired, although mum and dad probably will be.

Black and white

I was just playing around with black and white filters on the computer and made these two cute photos.

It's funny how this photo in black and white makes it look like the water is cold. Mitch doesn't look thrilled by the whole experience, but he really does love his bath!

In the one below he's thinking about something else - maybe he's contemplating the meaning of life (which is pretty limited for a 5 week old) or maybe he's trying to solve one of the mathematical mysteries like the Poincare conjecture - most likely he's just wondering where he left his dummy.

It will be good when he can smile. At the moment he just looks cute and thoughtful.

Mitch meets more of the family

Mitch got to meet more of his extended family over the weekend.

Great Auntie Marion got a cuddle ...

and so did Great Uncle John.