Almost human...

I can't believe it - our little girl gave me a decent sleep last night, going down at 10:00pm (eventually, after several hours of crying and feeding) and not demanding another feed until 6:00am. Good thing Andrew convinced me that everything else can wait and we went to bed at 10:40pm. I'm amazed - she's not quite 3w old, too!

She's a bit of a chubby chops, and obviously loves her milk. I'm a bit of a jersey cow too so when I make milk, I make it in bucket loads. As a result she is stacking on the weight and at an outpatient clinic check on Tuesday (we went to ask why she is soooooo unsettled every night and see if they could help) we were told she'd almost gained a kilo since birth, weighing in at 4.8kgs (up from 4.1), which averaged out to a 57g/day gain since she left the hospital. They expect 20g/day and she's almost tripled it! So I daresay she will continue to top the charts like her brother did.

Unfortunately we've been hearing a lot of this... every evening for hours on end...


...which was the reason for her check-up. But apparently it's quite normal, we were just spoilt that Austy wasn't like this.

Talking of Austy, he continues to adore her and ask for cuddles one hundred times a day.

Luckily Madelyn sleeps well in the mornings, which gives Austin some Mummy time. Here he is on Tuesday having a marvelous time painting in one of his Daddy's yard tees. A smock is on order as soon as we can start getting Maddy to bed at a decent hour on a regular basis so I can find the sewing machine again. He asked me to make him one on Christmas day when he opened the easel from us. We managed to convince him that using the chalk and duster that Santa gave him would be just as much fun until I came up with the idea of adjusting Andrew's tee-shirt with a few pegs!!

And more news on the Austy front, the poor boy had his first sting yesterday... For some unknown reason our car battery went flat and while standing on the front porch chattting away to the roadside assistance man, he grabbed at his ear, pulled something off and threw it on the ground. About 30 seconds later he started to grizzle, which quickly worked up into a pained scream. I took him inside and put ice on his ear lobe which was already bright red and blowing up like a balloon, while Andrew and the roadside assist man were on the hunt for the culprit. I managed to get out of Austy that it was black, and big and had wings, but mostly he was upset about why it bit him, and for that my only answer was because it was being naughty. All this happened while Maddy was having an unsettled period so between the two of them it was quite loud in our house with me flitting between the two of them and cuddling both simultaneously while trying to hold ice to Austy's ear which looked quite painful with two stinger holes.

Andrew quickly found the source of the problem - a wasp nest under the window ledge to Maddy's room. Right where Austin was standing at the edge of the porch and just centimetres from Austin's head height. We don't know if he had touched the nest, or just had bad luck being the height he is, which might have threatened the wasps. Andrew removedd and sprayed the nest and went to the chemist for more panadol and cream. Austy was afraid to go outside again so when Andrew was sure the wasps were all gone he got Austy to come and tread on the nest and he squirted it away with the hose so now he knows they can't get him any more.