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On Sunday we actually managed to catch up with Paul and Jo. Despite them livings six doors up the road, we’ve had difficulty getting together lately. This is mostly because it’s difficult to find a time that suits five kids (the oldest of which is three) and two recently pregnant women (who are tired, and.. let’s just stick with tired).

Anyway, we all went to the Foreshore Tavern for lunch. It was my first trip there, other than to the bottle-shop, despite us having lived in the area for about 15 months now. They have a nice bistro which unfortunately seems to serve very pedestrian food, but to make up for that they have a pretty large fenced off play area out the back. It has a decent sized play center under cover, a large grassed area, more play equipment and a paved area with tables and chairs. It was great to be able to sit down and let the kids run amok without having to worry too much about them getting into any trouble.

Here’s a photo I took of Baz, and one of Ollie which was taken once we got home and took him out of the pram. I was playing a bit with the new camera, but not really going nuts - I only took 97 photos over lunch.

Some more pictures I took - a passenger jet that was flying overhead and leaving contrails, and a shot of a seagull sitting on the roof of the Foreshore Tavern.

I’ve got a crop of the seagull at the actual resolution of the photo (although it’s shown as a thumbnail here), because it still amazes me just how big 8 megapixels is. This morning I enrolled in another Adult Ed photography course, this one designed to teach me more of the basics and hopefully help me get a better understanding of how to use my camera properly.

Some very quick updates:

Oliver is still doing marvellously well. He’s taken to waking up again for a 2AM feed, so no more nights of 6-8 hours uninterrupted sleep for a while. We’re still all trying to settle down into a routine.

Sebastian has been a bit difficult at times - he’s still great with Ollie though. I think he’s just getting annoyed at being cooped up at home so much, plus he was a bit sick over the weekend. He’s starting to throw more tantrums though, which was probably inevitable but is still frustrating. He’s talking a lot more at the moment - still not having conversations (at least not in English) but saying a lot more words in the correct contexts. “Wiggles” is one of his first words

I finally bought a new camera. I’d been planning to do this for some time, but got the opportunity to do it while I was home on Paternity leave. I bought a Canon EOS 350D, an 8MP digital SLR. Still learning how to use it!

Work has been busy since I returned, but I’m still trying to come to terms with changes in sleep patterns and worrying about Lou coping alone at home with the kids.  We’ve had representatives down from SGI to install some new equipment, but I’ve tried to take a back seat and let the new guy do most of the hands on stuff.  We have some lovely new toys though.

That’s about all I have time for right now!

More pictures of the kids! I’ve posted pretty often lately, but haven’t had time to say much. I’m way behind on email, and I’m lucky if I get to check it once a day at the moment (oh, the horror!) I

‘m not getting much replying done either, so if you’ve sent me an email and I haven’t replied it’s not that I’m ignoring you - I’ll get to it, I promise

Ok, first pic is one of Oliver in his census tshirt taken on census day.

Next up, because he’s been missing out on the pictures lately, here are a couple of pics of Sebastian. There’s Bazmo in his playhouse, Bazmo eating yoghurt, and then him falling asleep while eating dinner.

Here’s another picture of Oliver. The thing about newborn babies is that they do a lot of sleeping. They pretty much eat, sleep and make a mess in their nappies.

Ollie fell asleep on Lou’s bed in hospital, and as we hadn’t had a very good nights sleep we decided to leave him there and put a blanket on him rather than disturb him again.

Mum and bub came home today, so I’ve started my leave from work. Hopefully it’ll be enough time for me to start adjusting to the lack of sleep!

Oliver is doing very well. He’s feeding well (much better than Sebastian did) and is generally quite settled. He seems to want his mummy around at night time, which caused his mummy to not get as much sleep as she’d like last night.

Here are a couple more photos taken today:

Sebastian has coped very well so far - he’s showing an interest in Oliver, is gentle with him and has given him kisses. Hopefully he won’t freak out when he realises Oliver’s coming home to live with us!

On Wednesday afternoon one of the hospital staff came in and gave us a tshirt for him which says “I just made the census count!”. Apparently it’s part of the census advertising, but I haven’t heard anything about it anywhere else. I think it’s a very cool tshirt, but so far everyone else seems to think it’s horribly daggy. I’m hoping to get a photo of him in it tomorrow.

No idea when Oliver and mummy are coming home yet - I’ll have to re-read the census form and see if I get to actually include him on ours if they’re still in hospital.

technorati tags:baby, newborn, census

Oliver James Campbell was born at 8:46 AM today. He weighed in at 3675g, which is 8lb 1oz in that notation still sometimes used by older people and Americans. He was three weeks early and born by caesarean, but appears to be in excellent health. Both he and his mum are doing very well!

Here he is:

Here are a few birth pictures - not for the faint hearted. As I said when Sebastian was born, newborns are messy. Also, this time I got to watch from the other end of the operating table, and I have some great photos - but some of them might be a bit much for people to run into accidentally so I won’t put them up here.