The arrival of Charlotte Rose Papps - born 11 November 2014

At 2.19pm on Remembrance Day (11/11/2014) Charlotte Rose Papps was born via C-Section. Charlotte had been lying sideways for much of the pregnancy which meant that C-Section was the only safe option for giving birth (for both mum and daughter). As it happened, Charlotte's cord was also round her neck.

Charlotte needed two lots of oxygen following her birth, but once the paediatrician and the midwife were happy with her we were allowed our first hold - she was much smaller than her big brother (by nearly a whole kg) at 3375kg (7lb 7oz), 49cm with a 36cm head.

We were able to head straight back to ward after the surgery (where they also removed a cyst from my ovary) bypassing recovery. This was great as we could all stay together from the moment Charlotte was born. 

Charlotte took a while before her first feed... after 6 hours the midwife expressed some colostrum for her (1 ml) and fed her that. It probably wasn't until 10 hours post her birth that she had her first breast feed. 

I was generally pretty lucky with my C-section recovery as I had a shower the evening after she was born, most patients won't be up and about until the next day. I felt great after the shower and it meant that I had a better night than I otherwise would have I think. We went private care this time, so Jason was able to stay the night which meant that he was able to do all the nappy changes for that first night for me.

Ethan came to meet his sister for the first time on Wednesday morning. He was super excited and very proud! I loved seeing how gentle he was with his sister!

Ethan visited us every day in the hospital. 

Ethan was on hand to help with the daily bath at the hospital as well, which was lovely and gave mum time to have a shower and a rest!

Baby Charlotte has been a good sleeper thus far, here are a few shots of her first few days in hospital. She came out so much smaller than Ethan that we needed a couple of emergency trips to the shops for some smaller clothes!

More hospital photos of Charlotte! Looking gorgeous in the outfit her Daddy picked out for her! The far right photo in this collage is our first selfie together (taken at 2.30am).

 We got out of hospital on the Saturday following Charlotte's birth, Charlotte seems quite content to be home!

I have even got some sleepy, milky smiles from Charlotte already (which is lovely). Charlotte likes to have one sleep a day on someone's knee

 Here are some of my favourite photos so far... Charlotte on her rainbow blanket! and one of her first eye open photos!

Welcome to the world Charlotte Rose Papps!

Walking, Walking, Walking!!!

120 days before the end of my pregnancy I decided to take on a walking challenge, it was to walk 500km in the remaining 120 days (which averaged out to around 4.2km of walking per day). I had been having a tough pregnancy and as I am a goal oriented person, this challenge was just the thing for me! The rules were simple, I only counted additional walking - no incidental walking (i.e walking that I would have done if I didn't have the challenge) was counted. 

At the start of the challenge I aimed to get a few km in the bank so that I could relax a little bit later on as walking got a bit harder. Initially I walked to work a few times a week (which is around 7km a trip). Here I am mid challenge, all ready to go walking.

I walked even when there was no outside option. Here I am at the Melbourne Airport hotel, I walked 3km on the treadmill and 1km in the pool.

We are so lucky to live close to lake monger which has a 3.5km walking path around the lake. Perfect for nice easy pregnant walking!

We also live close to Yokine reserve, which also has a 3 - 4 km walking track (depending on which path you take).

I finished the challenge on my birthday with a 3.7km walk (last year for my 36th birthday I ran 36km, so this year I walked 3.7km - next year I hope to run 38km). The belly was getting much bigger here (close to term) and I was a lot slower than earlier days!

 I even managed to talk Jason into coming with me on my birthday walk!

 Here is the record of my walking, as you can see I really tapered off near the end, so it was lucky that I had a few km up my sleeve!

I finished the challenge 10 days early - which was lucky as wee Charlotte arrived the next day!

Project New Lawn - Phase 2

After the reticulation was finished the next stage for our lawn project was adding a new soakwell in the area, moving all the dirt in and then levelling the site in readiness to lay the grass.

Last weekend Jason, Ethan and Gran drove north of the city to pick up the 45sqm of grass for laying.

Wow, what a difference our new lawn makes - how good does this look!

 Lots of extra playing area for the kids, and less scraped knees for our hurricane Ethan!

 We are also anticipating that the additional lawn area will ensure that this area remains a little cooler in the hot summer months ahead! We now have 42 days water use exemption to water and bed down the new lawn! 

 So two weeks from start to finish and we have a new lawn! Pretty amazing job by Jason! We will look to replace the existing lawn (as its in pretty poor condition) around March/April next year!

Project: New Lawn (Phase 1)

Last weekend we decided to rip up the old patio and replace with new lawn. We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons - Ethan constantly scrapes his knees on the bricks and its quite hot in this area of 40+ degree Perth Summer days. Here it is before we started!

Ethan (AKA Spider-Iron Man) came along to help!

 Midway through the job! Each brick weighs between 3.5 - 4kg (we weighed them) and Jason had to move over 1500 of them!

Here is the pile of bricks as it grew throughout the weekend (latest news is that we managed to sell them all within a day of listing them online). 

 Ethan loved the new sand emerging... although his mummy didn't like the sand being traipsed through the house so much!

Next job was to get some new dirt (just 7 tonnes of it).

We were lucky enough to have a friend of a friend to help lay the reticulation. All done in one day! Its a lot easier to dig trenches in WA sand soil than NZ soil, that's for sure!

 Here is the pipe being laid for the reticulation. 

 Finally, Ethan and Jason moving lots and lots of dirt. Hopefully next weekend we will lay the new lawn! I am very excited to see the results (and to stop the sandy foot prints being laid throughout the house!).

Waterfalls in Melbourne!

While in Melbourne I wanted to take Ethan to some waterfalls given the lack of water and decidedly unspectacular waterfalls over west! The first visit was a chance stop where we saw a sign to a waterfall as we were driving the great ocean road. I did a quick google search and it said that the waterfall was a 10 min walk from the road. Given google usually estimates time for a slower than normal walker we all set out with enthusiasm... especially Ethan (he loves any sort of "adventure").

10 minutes in and we were still going up and down, 20 mins in and we weren't there yet.... I had visions of us all lost and on the news fore our inappropriate clothing and footwear as well. But we eventually made it and this is what we found!

On one of our last holiday days we visited a second waterfall... this one, unbeknownst to any of us was down what felt like 1000 steps (in reality it was probably 400 steps!). But it was worth it. It was a lot like NZ bush and I was really pleased to make the trip (although climbing 400 stairs while 30+ weeks pregnant wasn't the easiest thing I have done... and Jason had a passenger on his shoulders for much of the climb as well).

It was incredible how like NZ the scenery was. 

Ethan and his Gran went on a long adventure walk as well!

I couldn't resist the obligatory selfie while at the waterfall!

There are so many waterfalls to visit along the great ocean road and we only saw two of them. It's hard to know the "best" ones to visit but we took a chance with two that we saw street signs for! 

The Twelve Apostles

One of the must do's of our trip to Victoria at the start of September was the 12 Apostles - a collection of huge limestone rock features along the Great Ocean Road. I think there are only 8 apostles left now as the others have eroded from the weather and waves leading to collapse - however it is still a great sight and I am really very pleased that we made it down there.

It was a very long driving day (around 11 hours in total) and I was wondering who would crack first - me or Ethan... as it happened we both made it through the day well!

Our first stop was above this beach... there were some very steep stairs down to the beach, however we didn't have enough time to get down there and back as we were hoping to get some nice photos of the actual apostles as the sun set.

 The tourist site for the actual apostles was VERY busy with lots of tour buses and private cars. It was much busier than I thought that it would be. Also, while the sun was setting it wasn't the best place for great photos. So after a new photos here we decided to head down the coast a little bit more to the next location.

 It was here that the sun was behind us and we got some lovely light and colour off the rocks. It would have been nice to be here maybe 30 mins earlier to stake out the right spots for photos, but we were basically the only ones here and it was MUCH more peaceful than the main tourist spot!

 There were some amazing rock formations, with lots of detail! Again, I didn't have the right photographic equipment to do it all justice, but it was still an amazing place to visit!

I Love this photo of my boys with the moon in the background, probably a favourite of the whole holiday!

 We were hoping the sky may have "pinkened" up as the sun set, but that wasn't to happen! I imagine to get amazing sunset shots you need to visit every night for a month to get the right light!

 All in all a great day and a great place to visit. 

Otway Fly Tree Top Walk

While in Victoria recently we visited the Otway Fly Treetop Adventure park, they provided a unique opportunity to view the forest from a bird's eye view through the tree top walk - the longest and tallest tree top walk in the world!

The park also advertised a dinosaur walk so I thought it would be perfect for a family trip. Unfortunately a recent storm had severely damaged the dinosaurs, with only a couple remaining.... but Ethan was still stoked to see the ones left and he was left none the wiser that there would have normally been a whole dinosaur walk!

We came across the dinosaurs before we hit the entrance to the tree top adventure.

 High on the hill was a t-rex and his prey - a very realistic scene and despite the storm damage we all thought it was pretty cool!

 Onto the treetop walk itself, we headed off onto the adventure which started with at least a 1km walk deep down into the forest... at this point I think everyone was thinking about the trek back out (least of all Jason who knew he would be up for carrying Ethan out on his shoulders)!

The towering trees were lovely but unfortunately we just didn't have the right camera equipment to capture the true scale of the forest!

 We were lucky enough to get Ethan to sit still long enough for a photo with his aunties!

 The sheer size of some of the trees was just phenomenal! And I think everyone enjoyed the spectacular.... and this was before we even hit the walkway itself!

 Finally it was time to head onto the walkway, it was a very safe structure (thankfully as by this stage it seemed like we were 50m above the forest floor).

 There was also an extra high lookout to climb up (we were probably 70 m from the forest floor once we were at the top).... it seemed like a couple of hundred steps to me.... this was where Ethan decided that it was a little scary for him.... which suited his Mama as she was a little more than nervous as well!

 Here we are from the bottom looking back up on the walkway itself!

All in all it was a wonderful walk which tested some of our boundaries and comfort levels but it was amazing! Once we finished the treetop walk we had to trek out of the forest, it was a climb straight up which tested me at 30 weeks pregnant (at that stage I was very pleased that I had kept up my walking regime as it meant that I still had some sort of fitness). As I predicted, Ethan's little legs soon tired so his Dad got to haul an extra 20kg up the path!

Melbourne Holiday - Day 2

Day two of our holiday dawned with a bright sun over the hills with a promise of what was to come!

And what did come was a stunning early spring day, clear blue skies, warm temperatures and beautiful landscapes! I made the most of the beautiful day and went for a nice long walk! 

The Victorian coast line was so lovely, and so different to WA coast line. During my walk I soaked up all the lovely sights and could feel myself relaxing after a couple of busy weeks at work.

In my 30 week pregnant state I huffed and puffed my way up to the lighthouse and was pleased that I did! It gave another great perspective of the Victorian coast line.... unfortunately it was all too soon that I needed to head back to the holiday house so we could get on with the day's adventures!

After a very busy first day we had no major plans for day two of our holiday. So Jason suggested a drive to Apollo Bay for lunch. 

The roads were very reminiscent of NZ (and light years apart from WA roads).... windy, narrow and lots of speed restricted corners. But the landscape was stunning. We had a few photo stops along the way.

Unfortunately my passenger on board wasn't playing ball and I just wasn't comfortable at all so we never made it to Apollo Bay - instead we stopped at Wye River and had a great play in the rock pools and a lovely lunch.

Once we got home, I couldn't resist a few shots of the calla lillies on the side of the deck at the holiday house! My old favourite flowers!

Apart from the rib pain and motion sickness for me, it was a wonderful day! It was great seeing Ethan with loving the time spent with his grandparents and aunties and it was what the doctor ordered for Jason and I - time away from work and "real life"....stay tuned for more about our holiday!