Here are some videos of Nathan taken recently.
Nathans first trip to the beach. Initially he wasn’t sure what to think of the water but he decided against it.
Nathan has a play on Grampas new bike. He absolutely loved it, he’s a boy through and through and will be riding bikes as soon as we let him.
p.s. If the videos don’t show up in the email version, goto http://vimeo.com/purewhite/videos
It has been a very long week or two and I’m glad that it is behind us. The two weeks just gone were exam weeks. Tim had one the first week, and three this week. It’s the first time he has been to the campus in Toowoomba. He really liked it. If the need to study on campus comes up, I don’t think he will mind. There’s even free parking!
Jessica’s wedding is fast approaching. Two weeks from today I believe. There is a lot of last minute planning going on, and I’m seeing a fair bit of them. There was an industrial accident in the local area yesterday and the wife and daughter of the man who died were our caterers and hairdressers, so we are having to find others to replace them. Not fun for us, but a billion times worse for them.
Her fiance is from Cambodia and he arrived about two weeks ago. It’s been great to catch up with him, and others from Cambodia are slowly starting to arrive. It’s been incredible to catch up with really great friends of mine from years ago. To introduce them to my husband and my son!
Nathan is growing more and more every day. He has become a real mummy’s boy in the last few weeks. Tim and I play a game; He starts to cry with Tim, upon which he gets handed to me and he zips up. Then I immediately pass him back to Tim and he starts crying again. It’s like an automatic on/off switch. 
He is a lot of fun to be around. He is interacting with everything and giggling a lot. The other day we had our first experience of him doing something for laughs. He had reached up to pull a toy from an activity mat that his Grammy (my mum) bought him, and he let it go and it bopped him on the head. We laughed and he laughed, and then when he realised we had stopped laughing, he turned around, pulled and released again, and looked back to check if we were laughing again. This game continued for about five minutes, becoming increasingly funny by the fact that he was so amused.
Another milestone this week, first tooth is coming through. He hasn’t been that fussy about it either. He’s been a bit grumpy, but I’m pretty certain that has more to do with the late nights that we’ve had. The little guy is down to two sleeps a day.
Anyway, there is a lot coming up in the next few weeks, all of it kind of building up to this Nov 27th wedding. It’s very good having Tim home again.
We took Nathan for his very first swim today. Our friends have a pool and so we took advantage of the very humid day to take him for a dip. We don’t have a swim nappy yet, so we just used one of his old cloth nappies and put a fairly tight pilcher over it, and that worked fine. He enjoyed the water. He wasn’t all happy and giggly, or upset. Just very tame. It’s pretty hard to phase this little guy.
We went for a drive this afternoon to relieve Tim of his assignment stress (the two due this week) and checked out some of the back roads. In other words 4wding. It was pretty rough terrain and we got to a point where we couldn’t go any further and had to reverse out. We were following the railway line road. On our way home Tim said the brakes felt strange. Upon closer inspection it looks like we’ve killed a brake line. It looks like there’s been a slow leak for a while, and this just finished it off. So mum and dad have lent us a car to get to church tomorrow and we shall get it fixed asap.
Vanity, one of mum and dads kids, turned 14 today so they had a BBQ party over at their place tonight. Just their kids alone is a pretty mad party most days so the extra crew were fairly loud. My ears were completely blocked from the swimming so the noise was reduced for me.
Mum and Dad are discussing how to bury Morry, our cockatoo. Dad has suggested putting her in the freezer until future technology provides alternatives. Fine until the freezer accidentally gets turned off.
Anyway, I really am trying to keep this more up to date, even with useless information that I am sure you don’t really care about. If it bothers you, get Tim to take you off the mailing list and you can just check back when you want to.
XX Sara
Well Despite our best efforts, this blog has gone to the wayside again. But I will try and update you on all that is happening.
Obviously what everybody is most interested in would be Nathan. He is now six months old. My Mum (Grammy) seems to think that that time has gone quite quickly, but it feels like forever to me. I can’t really remember not having him. It’s been less than three years since I left high school, but it feels like years more. He is in his room right now playing on an activity mat, which is a rare moment. He is always moving, always needing to be walked or jumped or thrown in the air. He refuses to sit still on your lap or give you cuddles unless he is a few breaths away from sleep. So now that he can get around by himself it has made our lives a little bit easier. He’s not conventional crawling, but he can drag himself across the ground commando style, and if he wants something, bygosh he can get there quickly.
He’s not sitting unsupported yet. He’s getting there. I’m sure he would if I actually left him to, but I don’t trust him just yet so I’m always right behind him. He LOVES food. For at least the last two months he has wanted to down everything that he sees. We tried keeping him until six months before starting him on solids and we succeeded fairly well. Up until now he’s only had some mashed banana. He gets so cranky when he can see you eating and not sharing it with him.
He had his first taste of Ice-Cream last week. Tim and I went to Cold Rock to celebrate me getting my P’s and as I was eating mine, Nathan whipped his hand out, stuck it into my icecream and then back into his mouth pronto. It was like a lizards tongue. Needless to say, he was moved and didn’t have that opportunity again.
Tim has a lot of uni to do at the moment. We are about two weeks away from block exams, and so the assignments are coming on hard and fast. So far he’s done really well with his assignments. He’s gotten 100% on two now, so I’m very proud of him for that. Once the exams are over we can relax a bit I guess.
One of our good friends is getting married at the end of November so we are eagerly awaiting that event. Some of my friends from Cambodia are coming over, and it will be the first time I’ve seen them since I left, so I’m quite excited. I am helping with the planning and everything. I love planning weddings!
We are going to a great church in Toowoomba. It’s a bit of a drive, but totally worth it. We’ve been going up to music practice during the week as well and just having a jam with them. It’s been great to get hooked in with a church family so quickly. Just what we needed. Although it’s not a big church, there are lots and lots of little babies. It’s great to meet up with other parents and chat.
On the not so cheery side of things, we have been in to Brisbane recently to see my cousin Adriel who is in the Royal Children’s Hospital. He is two years old, and lives in North QLD. While him and his dad were helping clean out someones house, he fell over in the Kitchen and injured his head. It turns out he had a stroke. I believe they’re not sure whether the stroke caused the fall or the fall caused the stroke, but it has turned out to be quite serious. Initially he was paralysed, and they thought it would be a temporary thing and full movement would return, but it turns out its not as straigh forward as that. So he’s been flown down to Brisbane to start therapy and rehab. Because he’s young they have high hopes that he will be able to recover most of his ability, but its too early to say just yet.
This has affected me more than I thought it would. Seeing him in hospital was quite a shock. They’re a very healthy family. His mum is down with him, and as you would expect is very stressed out. If you could keep them in your prayers, we would appreciate it. His name is Adriel.
On another sad note, though not quite comparable, my parents cocaktoo died this morning. We’ve had her for 10 years, and she used to belong to a very close friend of ours that died, so she’s an important part of the family. Though she was 75 years old, we expected another couple of decades with her. I’ve always said I was going to take her when Mum and Dad died.
So that’s an update from us. Hopefully we’ll be back soon, but you won’t believe that because we have such a bad track record. Love to you all. We are really missing you guys over in Perth. Too bad we can’t be everywhere all at once.
Xx Sara
So, it’s been nearly 4 months since our last post, and Nathan has grown so much in that short time! Just the other day he rolled over from his tummy to his back. Then today he decided to sleep on his side, twice. His arms and legs are growing strong as he attempts to crawl. And he’s moved in to OO size clothing. He is very alert, tracks people as they move around a room, and is fully of giggles when you play with him (and he isn’t grumpy).
Anyway, God moves in strange and wonderful ways. Tomorrow Sara and I sign the lease for a nice 3 bedroom house, set on 5 acres of property out in Blenheim. For those wondering where Belnheim is, it’s a little spot near Laidley and Forest Hill. There isn’t much point giving out our address ether, Google maps is wrong and can’t find us! We initially applied for a much larger house, essentially a 4 bedroom, 2 study, 2 bathroom, 2 kitchen place. The idea was to rent something large that we could afford by ourselves, so that when Jess and Bunsom get married, they could have a place to stay, or if other people needed a place, the room was there for them. So we applied for this place, up on the hill in Gatton, overlooking town, designed for giants upstairs and hobbits downstairs, recently renovated with a large kitchen and nice new bathroom. The agents approved our application, but the owner knocked us back. Apparently, the owner has knocked back every application in the last few weeks, so we were told by the agents not to be discouraged, and to keep looking at their properties as essentially we were now “pre-approved”. They really liked our application, and strangely enough, most people in the office know who we are now too!
So we kept looking around for houses, visited a few in Toowoomba, had some of them crossed off the list before we even got home as the agents got tenants for them that day! Kept looking through the realestate websites to try and find something that wasn’t dodgy, failing down, or too small. Ideally it needed a big kitchen, and nice large spacey rooms. Then, there was one of the realestate website that we’d been “pre-approved” for, that didn’t have any pictures but sounded nice. So we drove out, had a look from the road, then called the agents, and discovered there was a viewing in an hour! So an hour later we viewed the house with about 5 other families, and really liked it. So did a number of other families from what we heard. We talked to the agents, and thanks to our pre-approval, they could put our application to the owner the same day. And we got it! So thanks to us having applied for a house already, and being knocked back, we got this one even with the competition. God knew what he was doing all along, because had we had to wait for our application to get approved, we would have had to compete, instead God had won the house for us already! AND, it’s about $3000 cheaper a year for us compared to last year, and has gas cooking and hot water, which is something I wanted, and a deep bath for Sara! It’s a very simple country style house, which we rather like. And while the kitchen isn’t anywhere near as big as I would like, it has a large builtin pantry, and has a nice wooden finish. And plenty of space for the kids to run and play in! It has large chook pens already built too, so hopefully we can get some chooks, and have fresh free range eggs!
In other news, our Car is registered and running nicely. It drives nicely on the dirt roads around the place. Sara’s mum thinks it’s a bit of a Tank, which it is, but I like it. I’m slowly settling back into Uni, given that it’s distance ed, it’s taking a lot more effort, and a lot more encouragement from Sara, to keep me going. Also, we got a webcam with birthday money, so now we can Skype people so they can see how Nathan is growing, and changing.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Hopefully our next post won’t be 4 months away, and we’ll get better at keeping updates regular. Feel free to check out some recent photos of Nathan on our Flickr account. http://flickr.com/photos/linuxalien
Tim
Today, April 20th 2010, at 12:27pm, Nathan Ezekiel Toby White was born. After almost 12 hours from waters breaking and contractions starting, Nathan was born. Nathan was 3.625 Kg (~8lb).
It was a beautiful (but intense) natural waterbirth at home. Sara and Nathan are both doing fine, although we are all very tired. We’ve already had a nap this afternoon, and will be having an early night tonight.
Because labour started nice and early in the morning, Sara got very little sleep. So at 6am this morning we all got in the car and headed to Kings park to watch the sunrise. We then headed to the bell tower and walked around, before stopping at Heirisson island (inbetween the 2 causeway bridges) to have a walk. We visited the kangaroo’s, and nicknamed one itchy and scratchy. He kept itching different parts of himself, and when we itched his private area, Kim told him that it wasn’t appropriate, so he kinda put is head under is arm in a kinda of embarrassed “I’m hiding myself” pose. The walking increased the intensity of Sara’s contractions so we headed to the shops to get some food and some needed essentials before heading home. It wasn’t too much longer before the midwife arrived, and soon we were preparing the birthing pool. The rest happened rather quickly, and beautiful Nathan was born!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/linuxalien/4537337479/ More photos will follow soon.
Well, after many months of waiting to get large enough that people recognise I’m pregnant and not just a little chubby, the time has come. I woke up yesterday with quite a large pronounced belly, and took the opportunity to get Tim to take some belly shots. It’s taken it’s time in showing well, but I really don’t mind. I feel like I’m starting to waddle though. I’m not eagerly wanting bubby to come yet though like I’ve heard many other people remark. Give me a month and I may feel differently. We are now at 35 weeks, so it’s 5 weeks until D day.
I think I’ve just realised how soon that actually is. As we’ve been getting things from people, they’ve been piling up in the spare room/nursery, and just this week we’ve started sorting through everything and making sure that it’s all washed and cleaned. Hanging up load after load of baby clothes really tested the amount of pegs that we have. We’ve been really blessed with the amount of things we’ve been given. We have a good amount of baby clothes, and while most of them are blue, if Zelky proves to be a female, I have no problem dressing her in Thomas outfits. Who am I to say that she doesn’t like cars and planes?
We heard about a baby market in Cannington, which is just about five minutes down the road from where we’re renting so we went and had a look on the weekend. It was incredible. It was basically just people who had tables set up with all of their second hand baby stuff trying to get rid of it, and it was decent stuff. It was also ridiculously cheap. Very helpful. We bought 7 outfits for $3, and then I splurged $4 on an adorable pair of Peter Rabbit denim overalls. While we were there we ran into a couple from our birthing class who told us about a cot, so after sussing it out, we grabbed it for $100. My sister-in-laws were willing to lend me their cots, but I figured we’re going to use it for more than one child, so I really wanted my own. And it’s beautiful. I’m so excited about it. It’s five years old, made in Mandurah, and has been used for two kids. Despite that, it’s in really good condition. I love it.
Our birth classes have been running for three weeks now, and are loads of fun. We are getting along with everyone really well, and they are predominantly younger than I expected them to be. Still in their twenties, early thirties, but its a really relaxed funny environments. The blokes are getting really into it too, which lightens the mood of the whole thing considerably. It’s a very varied group of people, we have couples from Holland, Russia, England, America. We even have a gay couple which was a bit of a shock to me. It’s the one thing I’m looking forward to most weeks now.
Katherine, Tim’s sister, held a baby shower for us on Saturday. She did the whole thing marvellously. The invitations were purple, with a blue strip on them (Apparently it’s quite difficult to do unisex invitations) and the whole night was a lot of fun. We got together with just the family earlier on to have a BBQ which was the first time we’ve had a sit down dinner with all of us in a while. The games were a lot of fun, (imagine trying to convey ‘milk drunk’ with a only a blob of play dough) and it was really good to enjoy everyone’s company. Thanks to you guys who put time and effort into it, and who came along to support us.
We had our last ultrasound this week, just to check on the baby. They noticed at our 18 week scan that the cord was around Zelky’s neck. It’s not a rare thing. It’s just rare for them to pick up on it so early, and for it to stay there through the entire pregnancy. So it’s still wrapped, but only once. Blood flow is good, and it’s not tight, so nobody is worried. It happens in about 20% of pregnancies. Other than that, baby is growing well. They’re estimating the weight at about 2.4kg or 5.3 pounds. It’s head down, optimal position, so all’s go. Everything is fine, no complications, and I’m still a low risk pregnancy. We have a new midwife now who is absolutely lovely. She’s really supportive and very experienced. My mum will be flying into Perth in a month. She’ll be staying for 3 weeks, so we’re hoping bubs will show up somewhere in that time frame.
I had a blood test a week or so ago which showed I have really low iron levels, a big surprise for me. We eat SO MUCH red meat it’s not funny. But apparently our baby likes to steal my red meat supplies too. That explains why I’ve been so tired, but now that we know, we can focus on getting me up to speed again. The test also gave me the best bruise of my entire life, with the exception of that point blank paint ball I got hit with in grade 11. Never going paint balling again.
So that’s been the last week in a very large nutshell. Everything has been baby focused. We’ve been taking quite a bit of time to focus on where we want to be going as a family, and what is important to us, and who knows, we may see some changes come out of that. Life is getting busier, but we don’t expect it to slow down. Not soon anyway.
