Posts Tagged ‘family’
milestones
my little girl turned three months old last week. and naturally it made me think about how fast the time has gone. in some ways, it’s hard to remember what life was like before she was here; in others, the time has flown past. every day she changes. i took her down to nelson last week for a couple of days so she could meet her little cousins .. we were only away three days but the rockstar said in that time she had grown taller, her hair darker.
it’s kind of de rigueur to include your birth story on your blog these days, i gather. but i’m not going to. not because i think it’s TMI, but it was a very intense experience and summing it up in words still feels hard. but i will tell you about something that happened on the night of L’s second day on this earth.
by this time, i had spent about five days in hospital and i was dying to get home. it was to be our last night in the post-natal ward but my sweet darling L would not settle. at all. she cried and cried inconsolably. something was badly wrong, i feared.
a fabulous midwife came and spoke to me. she asked me to express some milk while she took L for a little walk — ostensibly to calm her but mostly, i suspect, to give me a break. about ten minutes later the midwife returned with a quiet L. “how did you do that?” i asked, in awe. “oh, i just didn’t pay attention,” she said breezily. “she’s pretty annoyed at me now though”. and true enough, i looked at L and she had fixed the midwife with this killer stare. if it’s possible for a two-day-old baby to give someone the evil eye, L was doing it.
but soon she was crying again. a paediatrician came. baby panadol was given. more midwives came. no-one could find anything wrong. by this time it was about four in the morning and L was still crying. and then the first midwife came back. “you know what,” she said, “i think she just wants her mum.”
so we set up my bed so that L could lie beside me rather than in her crib. she lay in the crook of my arm and gradually quieted. curled up like that, we slept.
when i woke, i looked at my little girl’s sleeping face. indeed, it seems like she just did need her mum. and i vowed then and there that whenever she needed me, no matter where or when or how old, i would be there for her.
happy three months, sweet baby girl. we love you xox
recent and decent
1. mother’s day flowers from L. beautiful dragon tulips.
2. me and the baixinha 
3. smoked mackerel and potato hash at floridita’s. one of my favourite things to eat.
4. fashionable water at la bella italia, petone.
5. macarons at la cloche, thorndon.
6. water at the chocolate fish cafe, shelly bay.
food, love, our daughter. this is what life has been about lately.
makara beach
a short trip on good friday. ice creams and sea air .. and L’s first look at the sea
(hokey pokey. of course. and it was delicious.)
more from our weekend to come. hope yours was delicious, too. xoxo
simplicity
sometimes the simplest things are the best.
1. above, a perfectly simple lunch at nikau cafe in civic square. grilled halloumi, perfectly ripe tomatoes dressed with a faint sprinkling of oregano and a goodly pinch of salt. a squeeze of lemon, a slice of grilled bread. damn, it was good.
2. via the mighty boon, an important question: is moleskine going too far with their new offerings? their iOS app certainly sounds pretty rubbish. i used to be a die-hard moleskine devotee but lately i’ve been craving something new. again, the key might be keeping it simple. note to self offers elegantly designed notebooks, made in NZ and with a perfectly small range. i’m going to order some.
3. mondegreen is getting a lot of noise for bringing pamela love’s jewellery to NZ, but for me their dresses are the real draw. considered, clean, lovely materials. i can’t decide between the bambina in seal grey and the ma belle. now that the weather is turning decidedly autumnal in wellington (read: horizontal rain and 120kph winds the other day) sweatshirt dresses are an extremely good move.
4. a sunny day, a walk along the waterfront with my two loves. coke zero in a glass bottle as a treat, sitting in the shade and watching the leaves against the sky.
who, what, where. especially who.
well hello there, gentle readers. i sorta took a little break there, didn’t i?
the reason is this:
yes, there has been something of a population explosion here at ninetwelvetwentyfive. in early february i gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl.
what, you mean i didn’t say anything here?
well, there were reasons, i guess. i wasn’t sure that i wanted to be so public about the details of my pregnancy. it also wasn’t a particularly stylish time, let’s say. you northern hemisphere chicas don’t know how good you have it. here in NZ, maternity clothes are either extremely expensive and corporate looking (and i was not about to drop several hundred bucks on something i’d only wear for a couple of months) or super-cheap, probably sweatshopped and reeking of VOCs. there’s not a lot in between, at least, not that i could find. (oh, and proprietors of maternity boutiques should feel free to e-mail me telling me how wrong i am. i’d love to compile a list of sources for other suddenly-fashion-challenged mamas.)
so style blogging became a little tricky for a while. at least for me. others are doing better: the wondrous miz fashionwestie is looking utterly fabulous as she progresses through The Miracle Of Womanhood. i bought a couple of pairs of maternity skinny jeans (irony!) and a really cool wrap dress from womama. apart from that, i lived in tunic dresses, the aforementioned skinnies and high heels. not quiiiite blogworthy.
but now miss L is here, i am back in my normal clothes and it is coming into winter. and all my favourite designers are having really, really strong seasons. ooh yes. while i was pregnant, i had quite a bit of time to think about a new personal approach to style. i’ll talk about that a bit more in an upcoming post.
and then there is this whole new life, this whole new person, to write about. don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a mama-blog. not that there is anything wrong with mama-blogs. but i figure if you want to read about nappies, organic amber teething beads and such, there are lots of women out there writing far better about it than i can.
instead, i may well write about what an awesome person my little girl is and how, despite being unable to talk or even hold her head up unaided, she is my best little buddy. how the rockstar is an amazing daddy and how she gazes at him with her big blue baby eyes. and how she already has an impressive wardrobe of shoes (people call them “booties” but we know better, hehe) and likes it when her mama wears breton stripes. it’s the black and white, apparently. newborns dig monochrome. very directional.
all this to come. for now, i am just easing back into this blogging lark. so, hi there! thank you for still reading! why don’t you leave a comment and tell me what you’ve been up to all this while?
xoxo
