Chloe Amandine Blanc
(Chloe means 'fresh-blooming', Amandine means 'worthy of love')

Our little bundle of joy arrived on this last Saturday 6 Feb 2010 at 2.20pm (3.44kg, 50cm long). I'll spare you the gory details but we went into the hospital at 8am and came out that evening at 7pm which was such an answer to prayer. Our friends Jo & Brennan had the girls for the day and we were able to read them stories and get them ready for bed just after coming home.

God was so good, although it was probably the most painful of the three births (although, who can remember what it was really like 7 or 5 years ago), I felt like he was with me, seeing me through it all. Most importantly, I had peace.

Quelle relief! as Del Boy would say, when she was finally out!

Thierry and I had such a lovely hour or so after she was delivered just the two of us, cuddling, feeding her, taking photos which will never see the light of day outside of our family... you know those ones where... well, you've just had a baby and are lying there with no dignity whatsoever!!

Here are the sanitized versions:


The girls were super-excited to have a little sister to cuddle and fight over... Carys kept asking me when the baby was coming out and was surprised to hear that this was her and we were actually taking her home! When I asked Amelie what she thought of Chloe, she said She's a present from God... awww.

We've had a couple of visitors pop round already yesterday afternoon and Carys was very very keen that she have a cuddle while the visitors were there so that they could see what a good big sister she was! Too funny! Its lovely to see that they are enjoying her so much and are already so protective and loving towards her. Its not easy to share her with the other sister, but I think they're getting the hang of it.

Thank you so much to everyone who has texted or posted congrats to us on Facebook. We'd love to reply personally to each one but it just ain't going to be possible with a new bubs around.

Love to you all from a very happy little family of five,

Sophie, Thierry, Amelie, Carys, Chloe

Bonus laughs!

Just saw this that my friend posted on Facebook! Obviously one of those forwarded emails so could possibly be completely made up, however it is just about credible and very funny!

ONE
Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets.
I asked for a half dozen nuggets.
'We don't have half dozen nuggets,' said the teenager at the counter.
'You don't?' I replied.
'We only have six, nine, or twelve,' was the reply.
'So I can't order half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?'
'That's right.'
So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets
(Unbelievable but sadly true...)

TWO
I was checking out at the local Walmart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those 'dividers' that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the 'divider', looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it.
Not finding the bar code, she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?'
I said to her 'I've changed my mind; I don't think I'll buy that today.'
She said 'OK,' and I paid her for the things and left.
She had no clue to what had just happened.

THREE
A woman at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM 'thingy'
(keep shuddering!!)

FOUR
I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. 'Do you need some help?' I asked.
She replied, 'I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?'
'Hmmm, I don't know. Do you have an alarm, too?' I asked.
'No, just this remote thingy,' she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, 'Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk...'
PLEASE just lay down before you hurt yourself!!!

FIVE
Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, 'I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?' 'Just use paper from the photocopier', the secretary told her.. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five 'blank' copies.

SIX
A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid had eaten ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and he should be fine, the mother says, 'I just gave him some ant killer.......'
Dispatcher: 'Rush him in to emergency!'

Typical Sydney

We signed the girls up for their first classical dance lessons on Saturday and while the lessons are quite reasonable, the uniform costs do make you gulp a bit, especially when you've got to set two little girls up.

Don't worry about having uniforms ready for the first week says the lovely friendly teacher. A lot of children will turn up out of uniform for the first week and there'll be parents selling leotards for $5 at the first session that they might have bought for last year's concert and that their kids will have grown out of...

Alright, thinks I. As its an inconvenient financial time, I'll wait and see and then if nobody's selling them the first week, I'll go and get them at Best & Less or Target (instead of the pricey dance shops) for week 2.

Huh.

The girls come back from school, get changed into leggings and t-shirts and start pulling their braids out. Oh well, I think, I'll just take a couple of hair bands along with me and scrape their hair up when we get there if that's what everyone else is doing.

I should have known better. We have been living here 2 years now.

We arrived fairly early when only a few little girls were there, all of them in pristine little pink or blue leotards, skirts and proper ballet shoes, all of them with their hair scraped back into impossibly tidy little buns or ponytails.

I whipped the girls hair up into a quick but untidy bun on their heads (no hairbrush handy) and hey presto, my t-shirted, legging-clad, scruffy-haired, barefooted children amid all these neat little perfectly turned out ballerinas. On their way out at the end of the lesson, it turned out that out of 15-20 little girls, they were the only ones not turned out properly. Oh dear.

Poor old Carys shrunk back into herself and said but, but, I don't have a uniform! Even now, thinking about it, I feel awful for her.

Fortunately they cheered up quickly though and didn't seem too traumatized by their mother's lack of social nouse, still managing to enjoying dancing and twirling.

I should have known. This is Sydney after all. People say one thing but there is an invisible high bar they all have in their heads that you just have to find out for yourself because no one tells you mainly because they don't realize its actually there!

How annoying...

There are certain people's blogs who I want to follow but I CAN'T! Grrrr. Totally useless at working out rss feeds etc and I keep forgetting to log on daily.... What are rss feeds anyway? Want to follow Cat, Cecily and Maria in particular but can't work out how to because they're either not (gasp) on the blogger network or they have password protected blogs... Can anyone help????

Must go off and clear b/fast off the table before I go and have a pedicure with my preggo neighbour. Neither of us can reach our toes!

Celebrating back to school...

I think I saw it originally on the Parents Inc hot tips email, but inspired by Gail's and Simoney's previous posts about high teas and making end of and beginnings of terms special... I decided we'd have a special tea party just for us three on Monday afternoon after Carys's first day at Big School.

Super easy and bonus mummy brownie points as the girls exclaimed This is the BEST tea party ever! Poor little deprived souls! Perhaps I should do it more often.







I'm sure anyone reading this does this all the time but just in case there's anyone out there like me, here's the recipe...

Tell your kids to go and put something special on, then take:

one tablecloth (we normally rarely use one),
one fancy cupcake plate (or your fanciest Christmas-only special plates)
two half packets of lollies,
one mango,
half a box of strawberries (or other fave fruit)
six cupcakes (two for each of you just to be decadent)
one jug of Magic Juice (one third ginger beer, one third apple juice, one third oj)
some napkins and plates

And finally, an invitation to eat whatever and however much they wanted to! Supper? Who cares about supper?

Ta-da! Instant happiness. I was intrigued that the first thing that the girls went for was the mango! Oh hurrah! Healthy choices! The lollies hardly got touched and mummy got to scoff them when she needed a sugar fix later that evening. (My BP is low I discovered yesterday so its completely justifiable. Ha.)

How deep is his love...

Remember The Wall? Well, God in his infinite wisdom didn't give in to my desperate cajoling for the baby to arrive on Saturday.

I went to church on Sunday and at the end went forward for prayer for the birth at the end of the service (something I've been meaning to do for a month or so). Our pastor prayed for me and, you know how some words just leap out at you? The one thing that stuck in my mind was when he prayed that Jesus would stand between me and The Wall of Fear.

It was such a powerful picture for me, I could see him standing there, between me and It, protecting me. I could see the cross, making a hole through it and I knew that I didn't need to scale it, he's burnt a hole through it for me. And then it started to disappear so that now, 36 hours later, I can no longer see something that has been as real and as present to me as a physical object has been.

When I got home from church, I was doing the washing up and I felt like God was there, grinning and nudging me going See, aren't you glad you didn't have to face childbirth without that? I love his sense of humour.

I'm blown away by his tenderness and how deep his love is and how subtle his miracles can be. I realize that over the last six weeks, he has given me no less than four different pictures of him protecting me and of me resting in him, including the one above. Not just one, but four!

Its such an odd life, this life of continual internal transformation, but how mind-blowing, how extraordinary, how beyond belief. Its beyond words.

Chalk & Cheese

As different as chalk & cheese these two are! Carys has her first day of school today and it was with fear and trepidation and a few prayers that I took them to their two different assemblies this morning. On Thursday, Amelie's first day back in Y2, there were only a few tears but on Friday, we were back to the same kind of floods of tears that I had for a good 6-8 weeks in Kindy and then in Y1 as well... The first weeks were the most consistently awful, then things would go better and she would go off happily with her classmates and then every so often we'd have a couple of weeks when you would think I was making her do the very worst thing in the world by asking her to go to school without me.

I haven't been able to understand why. Its not bullying, she's had lovely teachers, she's got great friends who she gets on well with, she's not lonely. She just doesn't want me to leave her. And its not because I'm a sentimental mum who won't just say goodbye and walk away... I do. She just runs after me or holds on to her teacher's hand while stretching as far as she can to try and grab hold of me and crying as hard as she can. And when I pick her up in the afternoon she's always had a great day!

So after Friday's little show, the thought of dropping her off, having floods of tears and then having to be there for Carys's Big First Day was a little bit nerve wracking.

Prayers were answered though, Amelie's former Kindy teacher Mrs Bird (who she just loves) just happened to be the teacher standing the row in front of Amelie's class so we had only one or two sniffles and then she was happily off. Hurrah!

I was able to rush down to the chaotic melee at the Kindy Assembly which seemed even more crazy than the first time we did the whole 'First Day' thing. I heard that there were 140 kids in the Kindy year this year so if you can imagine each kid had at least one or two parents with cameras and possibly grandparents or siblings in tow.... utter madness. I had to ask the Deputy Principal where Carys's teacher was because I couldn't see for parents!

We found Mrs Condon (yes, that really is her name!) and the class, introduced Carys to two little girls standing in her line, snapped a couple of piccies for the daddy who couldn't be there and away they went to their classroom! Not a tear from Carys, she didn't even look back! There she was running to catch up with the little girl in front of her whom I had told her to follow, dodging other kids' siblings and parents and making her way through an impossible crowd. All by herself. Launched into the big world of School.

I found it quite emotional all in all, more so than I thought I would. Off to do some tidying and food shopping now (oh joy!). Its odd to be at home with two big girls at school, waiting for the next little one to show her face.

Loving that Michael Buble song Haven't Met You Yet... Funny that there is a little baby who I just haven't met yet! Must download his new album. Who knew that going to the supermarket could be so much fun/romantic/sexy!



Also new to the blog today:

• preggo update
  

Baby quilt

Made our little bubba this quilt out of leftover material from the one for her little cousin Emmanuelle's Christmas pressie. Hope she is a girl otherwise it might have to be turned into a gift for one of the other six preggo mummies when they give birth!

Loving doing this 1m sq small quilts/playblankets. Far easier than a full size single quilt. But hey ho, have promised the girls that I will do ones for their room so am pressing on. Still unpicking the mistakes on Carys's one but have cut up the squares for Amelie's. Have bought myself one of those quilting rulers which is showing up all my squiggly quilting shame and not-so-straight lines (sigh) and must invest next in a rotary cutter!

Was watching TV last night and saw an ad for the next Biggest Loser show. Caught a clip with a couple who are trying to lose weight so that they can have a baby. Found myself realizing that fear of childbirth has totally robbed me of the joy of having a new little bubba. Its been like a HUGE wall in front of me that I have have no idea how I'm going to get over and cannot for the life of me see past. As if life stops at childbirth.
Realized only God can help me. No one else at all. Had a good cry and a chat with him and Thierry about it. Asked for help. Felt more peace. Feel like I might just keep having to do that. Telling God I'm terrified and asking for his help.

Read Megan's post about Baby Levi this morning and then the one about Levi's sister Cora and was reminded that life does go on after birth, that there are good things to come, things that eclipse terrible pain. As my friend Jo said to me the other day, her mum always used to say, Its one day out of your life.

Ironically, one of the names we have chosen for this little girl bubba means worthy of love. What a great promise from God, she'll be worth it all and then some.

School

The new school year started for us this morning.

I can hardly believe that that weeny 2.525kg baby that was just on the cusp of being preemie weight, all skin and bones, is now a gangly 7 year old and starting Year 2 at school. Her third school year here in Australia

We had a few tears last night, worrying about whether she was going to have an angry teacher or whether she would know anyone in her class (there's 120 kids or so over the whole year). Nerves came out again this morning when, in the melee of parents, she couldn't spot me. I caught sight of her very sadly rubbing her eyes and and looking teary. Awwww.

She needn't have worried though. Prayers were answered as she has what looks like a lovely new teacher though - Mrs Finney - and she knows a fair few of her classmates either from last year or from kindergarten.

Its amazing how kids emotions respond to ours. We said our last goodbyes and I mouthed "Your teacher looks lovely", giving her thumbs up and she wiped the last tear away, gave me a big grin and went off very happily. So nice that one of her good girlfriends Zoe is also in her class again this year.

Also new to the blog this morning are:

• radical living
  
• preggo update and countdown
  

The Bandito Possum

You know how everything goes missing in threes? Well, we have a new theory in our house. Apparently there's a burglar who comes in and steals random things that are of no particular use to anyone except us and then leaves with no trace.

Then, somehow, the burglar turned into a bandito possum who somehow snuck down from the roof cavity, stole the blu-ray remote, Thierry's work security pass and a phone recharger for his old phone he has now passed on to the girls.

(We still need the recharger because the girls now use the old phone as a toy - minus the sim card - and it has run out of batteries so they can no longer play jiggy music!)

Apparently the possum repented and snuck back into the house this week and replaced some of the said items because I found the remote stuffed down the side of the sofa and Thierry miraculously found the recharger... two down, one to go.

PS. Sorry to scare you with the photo Gail.

Happy Australia Day!

I've never been that patriotic, in fact in general, Brits really aren't. The French are intensely patriotic but not the Brits. In fact, until Cool Britannia came along as a marketing idea, the general idea is that you hide your Britishness as much as possible. At least that's what I've always thought.

So its been quite strange coming to Australia and experiencing Australia Day with all the flags on cars, flagpoles in gardens, bikinis, boardies, hats, paper plates, cups, bandanas... all with the flag on. And then there's all the events the council organize! Its a really big deal here!

We ventured out of the house yesterday to Cronulla to get two token bandanas for the girls... I'm quite tempted (if I wasn't preggo) to get a flag bikini or tankini! Or even a strappy top! Maybe next year!

What's funny is the girls' reaction to it all... or rather, Amelie's. This morning she bounced into our bedroom at 6.30am shouting Happy Australia Day! and when I got up, I found her lying on the sofa watching cartoons and waving the flag - hee hee.

We'll go down to Cronulla today to spend the day at the funfair and all the family events and then go back in the evening for the concert and fireworks... should be good fun!

As I'm writing this, Amelie is having b/fast and said Ummm what does Australia Day have to do with Jesus? Hee hee.

The Nothing Box

Very very funny!