Spring Festival hulabaloo

Hey ya'll! I haven't been posting much lately, not because I would have been relaxing with our little prince, but because I've been busy busy sewing. Couple of weeks ago I tossed an idea to my mum of going to the Narrogin Spring Festival. She loved the idea and that was the start of two weeks of madness in our house.

For two weeks all the tables in this house were covered in fabric. I don't know where we ate.. Did we eat at all? No recollection on that one. We lost 3 pairs of scissors in that madness and had to buy one new pair (two of the scissors have since been found again). We got a new, though second hand, sewing machine to help us out so we could both be sewing at the same time (thank you hubby for that). We started as soon as we woke up and didn't finish until our eyes were closing in on us. We sew without thread (so tired), sang kids songs and had a blast.

 The day was amazing! So many friendly faces and so many lovely comments and of course some sales too. We had reversible dresses, reversible hats (for girls and boys), reversible headbands, nappy wallets, travel drawing kits, animal masks, bags, shorts for boys, dresses for girls, hair clips.

Most of the products were made (at least partly) from recycled materials, old curtains, sheets and such. Very nice I say.

My favorites were the animal masks and the boys pants that have the funky pockets. Gotta keep couple of them for Noah I think. People loved the reversable hats and the travel drawing kits as I sold most of them. Also the animal masks and the dresses got a lot of attention during the day.

Noah was hanging out with me all day and did so well. Many people were asking if I'm on facebook, so as of yesterday, you can see a button on the right collumn of this blog. Click that and you find me on facebook! Yay!

Thanks mum for going insane with me over the two last weeks and for helping me out. You are the best!

Presenting...

WHOA, it is already ONE month from THIS! Time has gone so fast and I've been busy (you'll see soon) and this precious little man is already one month old. I got a new camera, yay! (I'll tell you about that later too), but because of that I've been practising taking some photos, all of him of course. And you might want to know the name too so bare with me.

Black and white mode, and an awesome lens that makes everything clear at the front and blurry at the back, and one clever little boy that can already hold his head up.

Oh this boy has stolen my heart.

 I took maybe a thousand pictures of him, he is so very photographable! He has been so good, sleeping during the night and crying during the day, just the way I can handle it. And the name is still missing, well here it is:

Presenting, Noah Hayden Priest.

Trash and treasure - country style

One reason I love little country towns and living in a small community, is all the little happenings that are held in them. When we got out of the hospital with the mini man, there was an add in the mail box about a trash and treasure event held in the next town from us.

Yes we had a lot of trash that some people found as treasure and other people had trash that I found as treasure. People parked their cars on the oval and sold their stuff from there. Made a bit of pocket money and had a great time. Beautiful day without a cloud in the sky and lots of room for the big sister to run around.

First converse shoes

Every streetwise newborn needs a pair of converse shoes, am I right!? I have few, my daughter has two and now our little man has his very own pair. We make a very cool gang walking down the street. I actually made these while still in the hospital. FREE pattern found HERE (ravelry download), the instructions are very easy to follow!

Not that I planned this (too much), but look how we match now!

Something pinned

 
Anybody out there who loves Pinterest? Wohoo, I see most of you have your hands up. I've been collecting some inspiring things there and now it was finally time to try something. Yes, I made something I pinned on Pinterest!

You might have pinned it yourself, or seen it there anyway. If you haven't, go and check HERE. I've had heaps of old doilies in various boxes and now I finally felt like I had the time to put them together. I'm pleased.

Have you made anything you've pinned?

From big sister to little brother

How do you prepare your first born for a sibling? I've heard horror stories, but also stories full of love for the new baby. I wanted Emma to be as ready as possible. The whole pregnancy, we tried to talk to Emma about this new baby that was going to join our family. We put her in her big girls bed and after she was used to it, told her that the new baby was going to sleep in the cot. We went through all the tiny clothes together and she helped me put them in the drawers. She got her own baby for her birthday that she has practised putting a nappy on and practised comforting a baby and putting it to sleep. (Don't stress, she won't be doing these for her brother, but she does know now what you do with a tiny baby). Of course we've also talked about the belly and how the baby is there, she has talked to the belly and blown raspberries.

All these things have prepared her very well, but I wanted to do something else. Something that would be totally from her to her new baby brother. So she could give him a gift and show how much she loves him.

Rattle was a perfect gift I thought. She got to paint as much as she wanted (fabric paint). She chose orange and I chose yellow to go with it, as I'm not a big fan of orange. Then when she was finished painting, I looked at the pieces and saw a lion. Yes I stepped in a bit and drew a sleepy lion on the other side and awake lion on the other. She didn't mind.

The little man couldn't care much for his new rattle yet, but it was very important for the big sister to give him his new toy. 

Fun birth - the birth story

 You wouldn't believe, but this birth was so much fun! I really don't think it can get any better so I thought I'd share it with you.

Our handsome boy just 12 hours old.

I wrote a birth story from my first birth too, but I never posted it here. In short, Emma took 6 days to come out. Yes 6 days of painful contractions between 5-10 minutes. They sent us back from the hospital twice and once they had taken us in at the hospital, it still took over 20 hours for her to be born. Still all my memories were good from that birth and I didn't think it was that bad.

That's the backdrop to this birth. You can imagine that I was a tad bit scared that this labor would be a long one again. Also giving birth in a small Australian country town means that there is no guarantee to get an epidural (which I really needed last time) and the staff is limited so if they are really busy, you might be alone for a long time.

Photo taken about 5.45pm, just minutes before the pain started. All I had time was to cast the stitches.

My due date came by and nothing happened, so I started trying different things to bring on the labor naturally. I ate a whole heap of spicy foods, went for long walks every day and did an hour of yoga almost every day. I was carrying and stacking bricks. Nothing worked. At 40 + 5, I went to see my doctor and she said that the head was still too high. Two days later at the hospital they said the same thing, head too high. I was booked to be induced at 40 + 11 (as they count it here).

I didn't want to be induced so my sister-in-law suggested on trying castor oil, it had worked with all four of her children. Two days before I was supposed to be induced, I thought I might have been leaking a bit of amniotic fluid so we went to the hospital. The same day at lunch time I took a dose of castor oil. They agreed at the hospital, my waters had been leaking. Problem was that no one knew for how long they had been leaking, so they took me in and helped a bit more of the waters to come out.

At 5.45pm I told my husband to go home and have dinner with our daughter, give her a bath and come back when she had gone to bed. I had only had couple of little contractions so I thought there was plenty of time. But at 6pm I had to call him back. Within that 15 minutes the contractions came so painful and were only about 3 minutes apart. I was only 3cm dialated, so again it looked like this was going to take a while. The problem this time was that the contrations came one after another without any breaks in between. 7 in a row and then there were couple of minutes break before the next 7 started.

How is this a fun birth? It wasn't at this stage, It was hell. The contractions just kept coming and coming and I didn't get any break. So they put in a drip of Oxytocin to help the contractions get further apart. Also they called the one doctor in town who could give an epidural. It was my lucky day, he was in town and came rather quickly.

Can't wipe the smile off my face.

After the epidural kicked in, it was all jokes and laughter in the delivery room. I was being stubborn and wanted to walk to the toilet when I didn't have much feeling in my legs. Yes that was a source for many jokes. Then the next time I felt like I really had to go to the toilet, the nurse decided to check how far along I was. She told me I wasn't going anywhere as it wasn't the poo I needed to push out. The time was about 11pm at this stage.

So push I did and it was great! The midwives thought I was crazy after I said it was 'awesome'. A first time to hear everything, they thought. My husband, by my side, compared that it looked like watching a sheep giving birth! Ha! Oh it was a bit hard to actually push at times because I was laughing so much. Apparently he thought of saying that it was like cow giving birth, but somehow thought that sheep wouldn't sound as bad. Oh dear how I love you.

Didn't feel as tired as we seem to be. Thumbs up for an awesome night.

25 minutes later our little baby boy was born. It was amazing to have him in my arms, it was like time had stopped. We saw all the midwives and the doctor to hastle down there. One was giving me a shot of some sort, the doctor put just a couple of stitches, I suppose the placenta came out too. I pretty much missed all that, because I was just in awe and looking at our beautiful boy!

My gorgeous family.

We made such an amazing team with my husband! He was amazing that whole time and made sure we all had a good time. Though he thinks I was the joker out there. Which ever way, I have never loved him more. I am such a lucky woman to have him by my side and to have two beautiful children to raise with him. So thank you darling, you rock!