The last little while

One of my favourite books as a child was 'Town mouse and Country mouse'. I can't help but feel like Town mouse, visiting his countryside cousin. Although we've moved just kilometres away and remain in the same suburb, I feel as though we've moved to the bush. We have bush turkeys, possums, bandicoots, and lizards, spiders, frogs and the biggest stick insects you've ever seen. Luckily these are all mostly harmless, but welcome they are not (well not yet anyhow). I've run into many a lizard in our hallway, luckily dodging them before their untimely demise, I unknowingly stroked a frog taking shelter from the rain in our letterbox, and if I had a dollar for every daddy long legs that has been sucked into my vacuum cleaner, we would be very wealthy. But nonetheless we are enjoying our new home and we finally feel like we are almost all settled into our new house. Witnessing the amount of belongings we had stuffed into our 2 bedroom apartment, and just how much effort it was to move it all was incredible, but we are in, unpacked, and trying to fill out the empty spaces with mummy's newfound eBay addiction. We have set up the backyard with loads of equipment for Jensen to climb and play on, as we will be bunking down again for the winter, we thought this a good investment.

Jensen is loving having the extra space, and more access to everything. As we could enclose his area quite well in the apartment, here in our house it's like a free range farm for him, and with this comes the realisation that when standing on tippy toes, he can reach more. There is now also a long list of 'out of bounds' and 'danger zones'.

So Jensen had his first little sleep over at grandma's house the weekend we moved. He of course had a ball and didn't miss us at all, while mummy and daddy were so busy moving all day it wasn't as hard on us as first thought, we missed his little presence around for the day of course, but we thought this a good trial run before our mummy and daddy weekend away.

As last year around both our birthdays Jensen wasn't very well, and with being in hospital and all we didn't really make a big deal of our birthdays, so this year we booked a weekend away up the coast for ANZAC weekend. We lugged most of Jensen's belongings to grandma and grandpa's house and set off for our two nights away. The plan was to just sleep....We had a couple of lazy mornings and wanders around town, a few bevvies and lots of eating (not much else to do in a sleepy coastal town). By Monday morning we were well and truly ready to see our little munchkin so headed back after breakfast. It's lovely not having to worry about him while we're away and that he is having a very enjoyable time with his grandparents and being a very good boy.

Mother's Day was last weekend and it was better spent this year than last. We had planned on going to a special place for brunch but the wait was so long we opted for a burger instead. I must say eating out with Jensen in tow is anything but relaxing. Our food turned up, and before it had been placed on the table, Jensen had grabbed a handful of aioli. He then proceeded to do a loud and smelly poo, soon followed by coughing up a chip he was having trouble swallowing, flying it out of his mouth across the table. Needless to say Phil and I put our half eaten burgers aside and made a move. I got some lovely slippers though and a beautiful card and had a nice afternoon visit from grandma.

Jensen has his first corrected birthday coming up on Friday. We are planning on celebrating with a cake and allowing him to experience his first real cake tasting. With this upcoming milestone, we have many check ups with his medical team. We will be seeing Dr Smith to see how his eyes are going, we have seen his Endocrinologist who says he's growing gorgeously, currently quite tall for his corrected age and on the 10th percentile for his weight and head circumference. While at the appointment Jensen showed evidence of having daddy's genes as he spent a good chunk of the time checking out the pipes underneath the sink. We've had a check up with a paediatric dentist, as Jensen's top teeth have come through with missing enamel. This is because of his prematurity, and because these tooth buds were in formation at the time he was born. No big deal really, just need to take care as they are at a higher risk of tooth decay and breaking should he knock them. We also have a hearing test, baby health centre check, and an appointment with Dr Bowen as part of the NICU follow up program. Dr Bowen was the consultant on rounds when Jensen was born. She gave him 30% chance of survival and advised us to talk with each other about what we'd like to do in regard to resuscitation, and informed us that he would have learning difficulties similar to Down Syndrome, Autism, and a long list of other issues. We are very much looking forward to seeing her and watching her reaction to Jensen's vast vocabulary, and understanding, advanced gross motor skills, and overall intelligence, oh yes...and that he is walking! Yep, that's right, on daddy's birthday this year Jensen took his first little steps at just 11 months corrected. What a little champion we have.

Jensen loves talking, just like his mumma. His current repertoire consists of bubba, baby, bikkie, bot bot, bath, ya (as in karate chop), ball, beer (sounds very like it, but hoping not), and a funny little word that sounds like bitter that he will say all day long. He has recently added dadda to this list, but sadly no inkling of mumma. He tries very hard to say spaghetti, and brush, and bless him tries to mimic a lot of words we say to him. He loves experimenting with sounds and just babbles all day long (a bit like mummy, daddy would say). He is getting very good at walking, although the physio says he has skipped a few steps and moved straight on to walking, whereas he should have mastered standing and rotating beforehand, I think that the clapping and waving that he does while he's walking may not be helping, he just gets so excited the little darling.

Jensen's favourite pastimes currently include bath time (loitering around the edge of the bath several times during the day saying b b b), playing chasings, going through the kitchen cupboards, and playing in his ball pit. This morning I told him to get a book for mummy to read and he did, then I said let's go play with the balls and he crawled off into the playroom to his ball pit. He really has a good understanding of language and is such an interested and bright little boy.

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