A bit tired over here. Both kids and Milord have had colds forever and cough and grumble and snore through the night... *sigh*
King's Christening was on the day after my birthday. While I'm not religious, Milord sort of is, so we've had both kids baptised in the Presbyterian church.
Princess thinks any sort of music and singing is an invitation to sing and dance continuously from that moment on.
The godparents.
King is 6 months old yesterday! We celebrated by moving him into his sister's room.
King has been getting easier and easier to put to bed and to resettle lately. Partly because he's getting older maybe, but certainly a gentle application of control crying seems to have done the trick.
Yesterday I shuffled furniture around in Princess' room (now to be know as the Kid's room) and managed to squeeze in 2 cots, a double bed, change table, bookshelf, set of drawers and 2 portable wardrobes. You have to sidle around the double bed to get anywhere but it works!
When I put Princess to bed last night I warned her that King would be sleeping in her room that night ("Ooh yes please!") and that she'd have to be quiet when be brought him in (whispers: "Like this Mummy?!"). When I bought him in an hour after her bedtime she was still awake but did her best to be quiet as I put him down. He grumbled a little and then... they were both asleep! Wow.
Of course King then had the worst night in weeks. I think he has a cold - he was crying and snuffly. We resettled him until midnight when he drank a whole bottle, then resettled him until 5:30am when he drank another bottle and thankfully went back to sleep until 7am when Princess began singing.
Milord and I are a bit shattered, but Princess was really good about sleeping through most of it and going back to sleep when woken. Right now they are having a midday nap together... it's too good to be true!
Hmm, what else? We've tried solids and King hates them so far - I don't think he's ready. The look of horror and the shudder before he spits it out is extremely comical! He did do a serious nom on a teething rusk yesterday, but when it started flaking he spat the bits out. Fair enough - he's thriving on milk right now so there is no rush. I am happy to skip the gloopy stage and wait for him to pick up food.
Milord and I have our room back! We can access a whole new set of cupboards! It's awesome.
I've been slack with pics, but here are a couple:
Princess and King watching something on "her" laptop. King is too little to argue about what they're going to see. Yet.
And this is how we find King quite often. Poor little mite!
Poor King. I was hoping he'd have a better teething experience than his sister, but it seems his new teeth are just as sore as hers were. At least we assume that's what is the matter - he can't exactly tell us why he's upset!
He's having a lot of trouble sleeping anywhere except our arms, and even then it is a battle as he whimpers and howls in discomfort. So of course he's tired and clingy and we are tired and fed up and by the time Milord came back from golf yesterday evening I snarled "Take. It. Off. Me!" as I'd had King on me for nearly 10 hours straight!
Painkillers help, and I have a chillable teething ring which would probably help if he only had the coordination to chomp on it... When King does manage a bit of sleep he is his usual sunny giggly self and we melt back into loving him unconditionally again, but in general it's a bit sucky.
And this is just the first pair of teeth... *sigh*
My Dad is going through a rough patch. His youngest brother is riddled with cancer and has not been given very long to live, and the one closest in age to my Dad (I think) died from a sudden heart attack a couple of weeks ago. The family is hurting.
On top of that Dad is having pains deep in his chest and abdomen. I don't know if it is a good sign or not that they haven't found a cause yet...
I wish I wasn't so far away.
On a lighter note:
This is the best of the bunch of the photo I was trying to get... Oh, and if you ever want to know how old your skin, eyes and teeth look, lie next to a baby!
I bought Princess some new hairclips, so of course she had to wear them all at the same time...
I love you Dad.
Just haven't felt like posting... but there is plenty going on.
Because I can't give my Dad a hug, plenty of pics ;-)
King supervising the hanging of laundry on the back deck.
Having a big splash in the baby bath - he's almost too big for it!
Tummy Time.
In the bouncer - King loves this thing! He will bounce for ages and I keep finding him asleep in it - the only time he'll ever go to sleep on his own. The trick is to lift out the limp heavy fella and get him to bed without him waking too much!
Gotta lurve the sunnies! We get comments from everyone when she wears them. This is also Princess' fake camera smile...
A very ladylike babychino - she didn't spill a drop!
In the park sandpit.
Nearly a week late... RuralChick and her family decided to cancel their New Year's plans and stay home, so we stayed on with them until after New Year. 
It was a lovely change of scene, but we were all utterly exhausted and very happy to come home on Monday - sharing a room with both kids and no curtains means that every day begins at dawn. Which is at 5am if you were wondering. While King usually wakes for a feed about then, Princess normally sleeps until 7am. Not with the sun up and Mummy feeding King she doesn't! Then of course it is still broad daylight at 7pm when Princess goes to bed, so she plays in the cot until it is dark. And day naps are pretty short too...
King can sleep anywhere, but an abundance of cuddly adults and playful children meant that he had very little chillout time while awake and he got steadily more twitchy.
Princess can't sleep through Milord's snoring and screams like monsters are in the room, so he got evicted and slept on couches and in kid's beds.
I merely had to deal with double dawn starts and later nights than usual, plus very little solitude - without which I too get somewhat twitchy after a while!
Having said that, I didn't have to cook or clean for a week which was lovely! Milord had friends to stay up late with, King charmed everyone and Princess was overwhelmed with toys and exploring. 
It was surprisingly cold - the whole of December has been cool, and at RuralChick's elevation it rarely broke 20C during the day and I had the kids rugged up for winter at night! I didn't mind, but it was nice to come home to warmer weather... much warmer weather!
We've been home 4 nights and are all just about caught up on sleep (well, as much as you can with a 4-month-old!).
Today King had a checkup and his 4-month vaccinations... he was really good and hardly cried, and Princess took no notice at all - I had been more worried about her than him! King is 8.5kg - that's just about off the scale! His height is also nearly off the scale, so he's a proportional Big Boy which is ok. "He's thriving nicely" says the doctor. Oh, yes indeedy!
King sleeps an 8 to 10 hour stretch at night now, and beginning to settle earlier and earlier - he is usually asleep by 9pm. While this means his dawn feeds can be quite early, it is very nice to have kid-free time in the evening! King is a great smiler and started chuckling a couple of weeks ago which is adorable. He gets lots of tickles because I love hearing him giggle!
Where'd the last 3 weeks go?
I've been a bit blah. The Groundhog-Day thing of babies and housework sometimes gets me down, and while I'm enjoying Christmas for Princess' sake it does make normal shopping stressful. Plus schools are out so everywhere is full of big kids who don't take care around toddlers, and the usual toddler activities are suspended until the new school year so we're stuck at home. Friends are busy and family is distant, husbands snore in the few hours of the night I am allowed to sleep, and it keeps raining.
Bah Humbug.
Actually things are pretty good. Princess is bright, articulate and funny, and King sleeps an 8 hour stretch most nights and is full of endearingly wonky smiles. Milord and I are rubbing along fine.
My kids have only 2 (much older) cousins, which is a shame as I have oodles of cousins close to my age and it's great. On the upside all my cousins are currently having kids so Princess and King have lots of second cousins their age. 21-year-old Cousin A was in Sydney (from Brisbane) for work experience for a couple of days and dropped by for dinner. She's lovely:
And this is 14-year-old Cousin S who was in town a few months back and stayed over for a night. She lovely too, just rather... 14... and nearly got a clip round the earhole from me when she got cranky with my toddler:
You wouldn't think they're related would you? Milord's sister married a man of Italian descent and their girls have taken those genes, while my kids are so fair they're practically translucent!
I put up the Christmas tree the other day, with a little "help" from Princess! She's pretty good with it especially now that I've shown her how to take the ornaments off without breaking them...
King watches us in bemusement...
King is 3 months old. He's usually a really cheerful little chap and has started happily cooing and gurgling to us. I have a feeling he's going to be as vocal as his sister!
He's a big lad. He weighed 7kg and was 63cm tall a week or so ago, which puts him at the 90th percentile of the "normal" range. At the same age Princess was 5.5kg.
Most nights King settles around 9pm and only wakes once for a feed. His day naps don't have much of a pattern, but this could be because Princess' needs often come first so we are out and about a fair bit. Luckily King loves being out and moving in the car/pram/carrier! He sleeps or watches the world go by.
King adores his Big Sister. Which is a good thing because she enjoys stroking his head and "kissing" him (touching noses is how she kisses us).
Our only concern is his wonky mouth... When he was born we were told he had a skew jaw from how he'd been lying inside me, and it'd come right. 2 months later it still hadn't, so I went back to the pediatrician. Now it seems King may be missing the nerve that controls the cheek muscles on one side... so when he cries or smiles his mouth doesn't pull back on the left. He also has no dimple or nose-to-mouth grooves on that side.
(I've been told to document his facial movements when crying and smiling to see if there is change - I don't usually photo my kids crying!)
The bad news is that it won't get better.
The good news is that it won't affect his speech or eating, and someday we could try a surgical workaround. It's also not as bad as it could be - he can close his eye and furrow his brow and he does smile a little on the left... 
Isn't that a gorgeous smile? How much more gorgeous would it be if it wasn't wonky?
*sigh* I shall just have to get over myself and accept that my boy has a skew smile. Yes yes whatever, but my child shouldn't be wonky!
It's 5am. We are having a horrible night. Again. Poor King has caught his first cold and is a bit snotty and can't breathe properly. I think he may have been coming down with it for a few days because we've been having rotten nights for the last few. Where he was sleeping an 8 hour stretch and only waking just before dawn he's now up twice in the middle of the night and very grumbly the rest of the time.
This is the only place King can sleep. I'm not very good at sleeping upright myself, so I might as well blog... it's one of the easier things I can do with 7kg of boy strapped to my front!
The poor little mite caught his cold off me. I've been a bit uck since Sunday, and although I now feel better I've got an irritating cough. So he's got that to look forward to too!
In the meantime we're treating him with paracetamol, nose drops and a snot sucker. It is enjoyed as much as you might imagine!
King in his Bumbo chair. He lasts about 10 minutes while slowly wilting to the side...
He is a lot more comfy supervising the kitchen from his playmat!
Princess has to try everything too of course (she also lies in the playmat sometimes).
Princess loves painting and drawing, which is great because so do I and it's brilliant on a wet or too-hot day. And I can do it with King in a carrier or in one arm if necessary!
Also pencils.
And marker pens. Yes, she appears to be left handed - we don't know where that's come from!
When drawing gets dull we might mess with stickers.
...or we can just play with the pen lids!
