Our lil guy turns 3!

We have had an awesome couple of weekends, although the usual madness and busy as anything! The highlight of last weekend was our last minute decision to take Noah to see Ice Age. One of the daycare dads flicked an email round late on Friday asking if anyone was keen as he was taking his little girl. I had already made an executive decision that I thought it would be way too scary for Noah on the big screen, knowing how watching 'the grumpy lion' on Madagascar 2 and 'the bear' on Over The Hedge have freaked him out in the past. However, when most of the parents came back saying they had already taken their kiddies, we thought 'oh well, might as well give it a try!' especially as if he had friends to see it with, it might not be so bad! We realised quite late in the piece that it was going to be the 3D version and thought this could either be awesome OR a disaster. Anyway, off we went! I thought that at the least they might have kid and adult sized 3D glasses but no, they were one size fits all, and pretty big for a kid's head. Nonetheless, Noah was an absolute dream, apart from being a little scared in a couple of places (I must admit so was I!) where the big dinosaurs come after the animals, he was transfixed for the entire movie, helped along by a never ending supply of chippies, sandwich and some chocolate raspberry bullets. I think I have only ever seen one other movie in 3D and it really was quite awesome, even the pine trees in the first scene covered in snow looked so close you could have reached out and touched them!

Sunday I headed off to church, Mark and Noah had bacon & banana pancakes waiting for me when I got home from church, then I did a bit of painting of furniture for the baby's room whilst Mark started prepping the room itself before heading out for a short swim at the pool. This week, Noah has had another cold/cough but it hasn't really fazed him other than waking up earlier than usual, and he still made it into daycare every day (which surprised us a little given how barky his cough sounded overnight on Sunday).

I took in a tour of the new hospital facilities on Tuesday night, they are a vast improvement on the old delivery suite and postnatal units. Not only are the delivery rooms brand new and much bigger rooms (all 12 with spa baths rather than only 2 the old hospital had), the postnatal rooms are only a maximum of 2 beds rather than the horrible 4 bedded cubicles most women (including me!) have had to endure in the past. I do recall getting not a lot of sleep last time, not because Noah was up in the night crying because he was pretty sleepy those first couple of nights, but you could guarantee at least one of the other 3 babies in the room was taking a turn to cry throughout the night!

This week we have cracked on with the painting, the furniture is all done, Mark put the 2nd coat on the room yesterday (and just needs to finish off with a coat on the skirting now). We'll move all the furniture back in this week, and put up the canvases (I can't wait!) and take a photo or two. As Nana and Poppa are down next weekend, it was quite nice to have a goal in place to get it done before then, nothing like a deadline to get the motivation going!

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to our annual antenatal birthday party catch up - it was fun to see how much the kids had all grown and we realised that we hadn't seen some of the kids for the whole year since the last party. It was lovely to see a couple of the 2nd additions to the families who we hadn't met before, and I do hope to be able to rejoin in with the Friday afternoon coffee sessions that 3 of the girls and kids regularly do when I'm off on leave with bub. I took my first proper exercise walk in close to 3 weeks yesterday afternoon just a 2-3km walk around Kelburn, and although my foot held up extremely well, I can feel baby is sitting very low in my pelvis so it wasn't an entirely comfortable 40 odd minutes. Not sure that I can really push myself to the hour long up hill and down dale around Karori that I had been doing in the morning, and might have to resign myself to the fact that aquajogging is probably by far the best form of exercise on the joints for me to be doing from now on in until baby arrives....sigh....! I have been doing a lot of stretching in the early mornings too which seems to have helped my foot no end, and although I miss getting a really good cardio workout, I'm sure all the stretching and toning is also good for the body!

And the highlight of the blog (of course) is that today, Noah turned 3!




He has been showing us '3' on his fingers for a few weeks now, and I'm sure we have helped with the excitement and anticipation levels by telling him all week his birthday is on Sunday and that we were going to the zoo. This morning, I came down just after 7am to get Noah, and we went back upstairs and climbed into our bed (our regular weekend treat!). Noah's eyes lit up when he saw a few small packages on the bed, and when we said 'Happy Birthday Beautiful', his response was 'Thank you Mummy and Daddy'. After he had opened each present, we were again thanked and asked nicely 'Please may I open another one?'. His big present was his bike which is still a little on the big side for him but he will grow into it over time, and the thrill of the morning was a motorbike from Andrew (Mark's old boss), Nichola and Maddison which makes cool noises and does a wheelie. We have also had fun reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' a couple of times this morning.




After Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Noah Bear indulged in our usual chocolate porridge (another weekend treat - Uncle Toby's Milk Oaties with a little cocoa and golden syrup), we had a webcam with Grandma & Grandad before heading out the door to the zoo. We were delighted to catch a glimpse of the moreporks up high in the branches of the kiwi house (a new addition), and enjoyed seeing the baby chimp up close against the glass window. Then we headed to Floriditas to celebrate a brunch for Craig (George's dad) whose birthday was earlier in the week. Noah was in his element hanging out with George and Phoebe.

I somehow found myself at the end of the table amongst the 3 kids which was highly entertaining! At one point when the kids were jumping up to look in the large mirror behind our seat and falling down, pretending to be turtles burrowing into the seat and having all kinds of (loud) fun, I thought to myself that if we wound the clock back to 3-4 years ago, no doubt I'd have been sitting elsewhere in the cafe thinking about how 'noisy' those children were being, but instead I just loved seeing Noah interacting with his buddies, and Phoebe's mum and I were enjoying the 'slice of life' it gave us getting some insights as to the fun they must get up to on a daily basis at daycare!

Of late, I have also been keeping myself busy with contributing to 'Vessel' the magazine for the women of The Rock church. We are putting together the first edition of 2009 at fairly short notice in time for the women's getaway weekend at the end of August. I've had fun with the 'Zest for Life' theme, writing some poetry, contributing our 'Zesty' Lemon & Poppy Seed muffin receipe, and finding some links to uplifting stories and videos on the Internet. One which I really found moving on my search for material was the story of little Eliot. If you type in 'Ninety-nine balloons' onto YouTube or click on the link, you can watch this short and moving 6-minute video of Eliot's life.

We are really stretching out Noah's birthday with Nana & Poppa coming to visit next weekend, and have saved his birthday party for next Saturday afternoon so they can join us for the fun. Mark and I are also hoping to get along to Harry Potter 6 on Tuesday night as Jackie has agreed to babysit for us, might be the one and only 'couples movie night' we get before bubs arrives...less than 8 weeks to go and counting!

Here's a wee clip of Noah's thrown together birthday cupcake we did tonight in-lieu of the real thing next weekend.