Veronica and Sven’s Baby Diary

Christmas is over and, boy, wasn’t it eventful.  We were all set for everyone to come over to our house, food was organized and the house was clean.  Then, on Christmas Eve, Sven and I both came down with gastro… again :(  We must have been very, very bad last year to get given gastro for Christmas.  So after a crap-tacular night of a special kind of festivities and very little sleep (especially after having to get up to crying children three times too) we were convinced to still have Christmas at our house.  In the morning, Simon and Holly had a ball opening up all their presents from us and Santa.  Well, Holly had fun once she worked out how to get it started, and Simon had fun playing with the paper and various bits of boxes.  Then Guy, Anita, my Mum, Klas and Sheila come around for lunch and the rest of the day. 

Since Christmas we’ve been trying to get our act together to go camping.  We went out and bought a tent and a whole bunch of camping supplies.  We’d planned on going up to Fraser Island but since there’s currently a cyclone watch in the area and they’re evacuating all campers off the island it’s probably not the place for us after all.  Sven thinks that it’s the perfect time to go though since there’ll be plenty of free campsites.  So, at this stage, we’re aiming to go somewhere (not sure where yet) around the end of January. 

To be sure we’d have enough room for both children and all our junk, the tent we bought is about as big as small house.  I’m not kidding.  It’s got three rooms plus an enclosed annex.  Since we hadn’t actually seen it popped up (only similar ones, but not the actual one we bought) I wanted to make sure we could put it together and that it was what we were after before we actually set off on our trip.  So, without much hesitation on my part, I started setting up the tent in the dining room inside the house (since it was raining outside).  I unrolled it then started with the Holy Crap!’s as I realised just how big it was… right before I realised I’d only unrolled half of it!  After I had spent probably an hour trying to get it manoeuvred in the dining room to fit, moving furniature that was getting in the way and banging poles into the wall (while Simon ‘helped’), I gave up, rolled it back up and took it downstairs.  It filled our entire back patio area diagonally.  That said though, I was able to pop it up (mostly) by myself and pack it away again all within an hour.

Here are some pics although they’re taken with a funny lens so they’re a bit distorted.

Yippee!  We’re all on holidays now for the Christmas/New Year period.  We’re planning on spending lots of time doing lots of things and getting out and about.  Today we spent the day out at King Island at Cleaveland where there’s this cool sand bar that you can walk on and that leads out to a little island during low tides.  We took along Sven’s old surf ski and bought Holly a life jacket and set out trying to paddle in the extremely low water (it was heading towards low tide when we arrived) with Holly balanced on top and refusing to go in the water.  Sven managed to make it a good distance across to part of the sand bar but I was no where near as well balanced (having not had much practice before) and kept getting wobbled around by the tidal currents under the surf ski.  It was a lovely morning and lots of fun.

Simon is continuing to grow at a rapid pace.  He’s into size 1 clothing already and is horrifying me daily by the fact he seems determined to walk soon.  He’s managing to pull him self up on various things until  he’s standing and, if the object isn’t bolted down, he’ll push it across the room walking.  It’s ever so slow at this stage but that’s only a matter of time.  He’s not quite at the stage of standing unsupported yet either but I don’t think that’s far off either as he’s been letting go more and more often so he’s obviously getting confident.

I’ve been back at work now for 3 months and I certainly feel settled back in.  I’m supposed to be working 3 days a week but I’ve been working 4 in the lead up to a major milestone on the project that we had last week.  I’m not sure whether now’s the time to go back 4 days permanently or not yet since I miss the children terribly and feel like I never get to play with them anymore.  I’m lucky that I’ve been kept so busy at work that I don’t really have time to worry about them while I’m there.

 Oh!  And last week Holly participated in her first Christmas concert.  She got up on stage with all the other children from her class at daycare and sang carols.  She was so adorable!  I was so amazed at how great she really was - she knew the words and hand actions and wasn’t phased by the mass of people watching her.  Here are a couple of snaps, including one of Holly and her friend Isaac (he’s completely besotted by Holly but she doesn’t seem overly interested in being anything more than friends).

For the very first time since Sven and I were married we have a Christmas tree!  Last night we all helped decorate it - Holly was very good at fetching the decorations to be hung but didn’t want to do it herself, and Simon was very good at picking up any ornaments we happened to drop.  It’s lovely to sit here with the twinkling Christmas lights for company

This morning while Holly and Simon were still having fun with the decorations I made a few videos for you all, so here they are.