Mozart, Maggie and cupcakes

Maddy and Sophie invited us around this afternoon for afternoon tea (iced coconut cupcakes made by Maddie and rhubarb and apple cake made by Judy L. - yummy) and a piano recital by T, M and S. All three play with great skill and feeling and T's "Alla Turca" is an absolute show stopper. Their playing is a credit to the Suzuki method, Gabrielle's skill as a teacher and unending support from Judy L & J. Sounds even better too on the new baby grand!

It was a privilege to hear a preview of T's performance at the Australian National Gallery on 9 June.

T, M & S play like angels but in between performances quickly revert to their earthly selves. Maggie the 6mth old puppy brought back from Bright Victoria is a constant diversion. No wonder she sleeps so soundly in her basket whenever she finds a quiet moment. The Bali bling looked great on S & M and T will be kept entertained by his new books. It was a lovely way to end a beautiful weekend and our first week as proud grandparents.

Eyes open Ella

We were really lucky this morning when we visited J&J to find Ella awake and full of smiles (??) after the midwife's daily visit. J&J had just learnt that Ella had gained 120g in the barely 6 days since her birth, so things are going very well in the feeding department. It was great to see Jody looking better - regaining her colour, a bit more energy and hearing her laugh again. J&J's next project is to try to convince Ella to stay awake and have more feeds during the day and hopefully sleep more at night. We wish them all the best. J goes back to work tomorrow after his week as the "baby whisperer". He was cooking up a storm this morning getting meals ready for the week ahead.

We have enjoyed the most beautiful mild Autumn weather this week. Rob & I left home early this morning, picked up Granny and enjoyed shopping for all our fresh food at the Farmers Market at the Ainsworth St CIT building. It is great fun bringing home beautiful, locally grown, fresh produce. The pink lady apples are my favourite - and all chemical free.

We spent the afternoon yesterday with Claire and Jeremy and big O and little A. They have all had a stressful and worrying week with big O's eye operation and then a certain incident with 2 dogs on Friday. C&J were tired yesterday but both boys were full of fun and noise. Rob hung out with the big O and I tried to divert little A from his darling mummy when I could.

Ella is home

Ella and Jody were able to go home yesterday afternoon. These pictures were taken Friday evening 25 May, of Ella asleep, very calm and comfortable, in her bassinet. Josh and Jody are enjoying being home with their baby girl. She is feeding well and even had a continuous long sleep between 2.30and 7.30am this morning.

The designer outfit from Country Road is a great fit-thanks to the great aunties! Josh and Jody have appreciated the cards, gifts and best wishes from everybody. The kids in one of my special units at school sent baby Ella a special gift pack with little teddy bear, so I have to report back on Monday how she liked it!

J&J and little E make a great family!

Ella - Day one

These pictures were taken Tuesday evening 22 May

when Ella was peacefully asleep; happy and contented after spending her first full day with her mummy and daddy

Ella's first poem

The best thing we have ever done

Is giving life to our wonderful son,

Now he and Jody have done the same

Ella, is their beautiful daughter's name.

In a single strand of her hair

Is the human connection we all share

And our world is now a more wonderful place

As Ella has joined our human race

Ella came today and so did the rain!

Rob Pettiford (Grandpa) May 2007

Ella is here at last

Beautiful, healthy, baby Ella has finally arrived, reluctantly, and with some last minute dramas, at 2.04pm Monday 21 May 2007. She is an absolute honey pot baby with soft plump little pillows for arms and chunky, milky soft little legs and long fingers and toes. She is a very plump 11lbs 5oz (5.3kgs) with chubby little cheeks and thick black hair that has a suspicion of a curl in it. We think she is the image of Jody with her mother's gorgeous mouth and cute little nose. She has a few bruises from her difficult (natural) birth but they will quickly clear. I was lucky enough to have a very long cuddle with her when she was only about 3 hours old. She is an incredibly soft little bundle and quite capable of complaining loudly when she needs to.

Being so chubby she was very slow and reluctant to come out, which created some dramas for everybody, especially in the final half hour. Joshie said it was like an ER episode with about 15 people in attendance. He said Jody stayed calm and brave but I know it was very stressful for him to go through too. They are both full of praise for the professionalism of all the medical staff and the caring treatment they are receiving. Josh, Jody and Ella are "public" patients yet have had the best possible care and Jody is in a room by herself tonight. We feel blessed to live in such a civilised, well resourced society at times like this.

Jody's labour started in earnest at around 1.30 this morning so neither Josh nor Jody have had much sleep in the last 24 hours. We are hoping they can start recovering now. We are all very relieved that the waiting is over and baby Ella is safely here. It is raining heavily again in Canberra tonight. Can we be lucky enough to have the drought brought to an end too?

I raced up to the hospital soon after 2.00pm this afternoon because I was getting so agitated and forgot the camera (duh). I will get some shots tomorrow and post them on the blog so you can all see our honey pot of a baby girl.

A waiting weekend

J&J are settling in at Canberra Hospital tonight. Jody is booked in for an induction tomorrow morning. Josh has taken a week's leave from work from tomorrow. Without a doubt it is all going to happen. We'll keep you posted. I hope we can all get some sleep tonight.

We had some wonderful rain late this week - starting at midnight Thursday night and lasting right through (off & on) to late Friday evening. There was lots of talk of Ella's imminent arrival bringing on the end of the drought.

Rob and I had booked an inspection of our Coogee apartment many weeks ago, so we drove down to Sydney for the day yesterday to check out the state of 8/85. The tenants' lease is up on 10 June so we needed to do some sorting about what will happen next.

It was a spectacular, clear, warm 24oC day in Sydney. Rob and I had a stroll along the Coogee esplanade, had lunch at our favourite Barzura Cafe and then met up with our agent for the inspection at 2.30pm. Our young tenants have obviously looked after the place very nicely. With a bit of luck they will be happy to extend their lease for a few months until we are ready to take it over towards the end of the year. We enjoyed the day; the only glitch was the 40 minute delay on the M5 as we drove into Sydney, caused by a semi-trailer catching fire near the Ingleburn turnoff (no one injured luckily).

We've just got back from celebrating Jeremy's birthday with an afternoon of feasting on French food from the Chapman patisserie and some of Jeremy's great wines. J&J were able to join us too as they were killing time before going into hospital tonight. Maxie & Rod are leaving for their three week holiday in Turkey tomorrow so we had quite a few reasons to break out the Majella as well this afternoon. Ollie found out how much he adores French chocolate birthday cake and Angus created a scene when he came out dancing in just his nappy, allowing everyone to see his gorgeous thighs.

Mothers Day

Our breakfast today celebrated the many mothers in our Canberra family: Jody (VERY soon to be), Claire, Maxie, Jude, Granny K. Our thoughts were with Ros at Emerald Beach and Bobbie in Brisbane via phone calls today.

Joel needs to know that bacon and eggs are off the menu at our family breakfasts now - we've discovered frittata, but still accompanied by chippolatas and all the other trimmings (fresh fruit, croissants, Rob's pancakes & maple syrup).

I am very excited by finally being able to blog, shop on ebay (first time user this month) use Shutterfly for printing my images taken by my beautiful Canon 30D SLR camera AND create movies captured with my new Canon MVX430 movie camera. I made all the family sit and watch my first movie this morning- Our Bali trip, April 2007.

There were a lot of "paying out " comments as you would expect from my family; it is after all a fairly cheesy exercise creating a movie from your travel clips. However I did notice that Oliver was pretty enthralled. The fact that he is never allowed to watch television much probably made him extra keen to catch up on time in front of the "idiot box", even if he was only watching my cheesy 12 minute movie.

The boys had some fun playing with the "antique" Javanese puppets we brought back from our shopping expedition in Denpasar. I loved these photos; hope you do too.

Thank you for the responses, comments from last week's post. This is so much fun I am going to try to update every week. This should be a BIG week as we all think Ella should definitely be arriving some day soon. She is a very eagerly awaited baby girl!

An Autumn Sunday

The Majella is on ice ready for the arrival of baby Ella. She is officially due on Wednesday 9 May and Jody is more than ready for Ella to arrive.

It has been a mild, sunny week in Canberra. Rob raked a lot of leaves this morning. The foliage on our claret ash was not spectacular this year - so much thinner than usual and not its usual rich claret colour. The pistachios are as brilliant as ever and our sasanqua camellias have never looked better. They are flowering spectacularly at the moment. While the recent rains have been welcome it is still DRY, DRY, DRY.

Rob and I had quiet day today. I had a "PD" day with my school's exec. team yesterday and it was nice to just stay at home and catch up. Josh and Jody called in, in between a laksa lunch at the Dickson Noodle House and an early dinner with Claire and Jeremy. We were very outgoing last weekend with a special dinner at Aubergine, Griffith with Maxie & Rod and our first vist to the new Dendy Cinema in Civic to see Paris, je t'aime (which we loved).

It is Mother's Day next weekend (as everyone knows). We will have a family breakfast here if that suits baby Ella's plans.