Bug = 1 year 7 months 8 days
Bub = due in 108 days

I almost forgot one of the best things that happened this past weekend in Christchurch!

When I was pregnant with Bug, I feel like I sat around heaps with family hands on my tummy trying to get them to feel Bug move. Bob felt him a lot in bed at nights, but all our other family probably only felt him once or twice each (if that!).

So this weekend I was keen to let Andi feel Bub, but I didn’t have a lot of hope. On Sunday afternoon, with our departure looming, I decided it was now or never. In the past, I’ve sat beside the “feelers” on a couch, but this leaves their arm and hand in a very awkward position. So this time I lay down on the lounge floor with Andi beside me, and hey presto! Before I’d had time to think about how to get Bub to move, she was bouncing and kicking and sliding all over the show!

I get the feeling that Bub is much more active (or more aggressive!) than Bug was, but perhaps my memories of the amount of kicking I got from Bug have dimmed over time, or maybe I’m just more aware of exactly what’s going on with my body and baby this time around.

Bug = 1 year 7 months 7 days
Bub = due in 109 days

Phone Call

Today I let Linus talk on the phone to Nana. In general, Linus “talking” on the phone is Linus having the phone held up to his ear, looking interested for 2.2 seconds, and then squirming away and going off to do his own thing.

Today, however, not only did he stay and listen to Nana, but when Nana asked him “Linus, who’s this?” he said “Nana” (one of his favourite words today). She was thrilled – it’s hard enough to get him to say anything on the phone, let alone answer a question and answer it right!

Where’s It Gone?

Linus has a fabulous trick at the moment. He gets a toy, hides it behind his back with both hands, then “looks” around for it. His fake looking is frighteningly convincing – he looks under and behind everything he can think of. After an appropriate amount of time – and after you’ve looked in all the places he wants you to! – he’ll reveal the toy in all its glory! The only weakness in this routine of his that he’ll often bend down or turn around to “look for” the object, and unwittingly show his audience the toy behind his back.

Bug = 1 year 7 months 7 days
Bub = due in 109 days

This weekend our little family of 3.5 went up to Christchurch to see Bob’s sister and her partner.

The Travelling

The drive up on Friday afternoon was fairly hellish, with Linus not happy to do anything for more than a minute or two in his carseat. He threw most of his toys away as soon as I passed them to him, and the only thing I remember keeping him happy for a sustained period was the sun visor he pulled off his side window.

To skip to the end of the story, we decided to try driving home in the evening. This meant that we would get to spend almost the whole day in Christchurch, plus it would be dark and Linus’s bedtime, so he would sleep for the whole trip. The only downside was that it would mean arriving home very late on a Sunday night.

You know what they say about “the best laid plans of mice and men”? I’m not sure exactly what they do say, and I must admit I don’t know who “they” are, but you’ll be delighted to hear that our plan worked like clockwork! Linus fell asleep after about 20 minutes on the road, and didn’t wake up until we stopped for tea in Timaru. He kept us entertained for half an hour there while we ate, then he fell asleep after another 20 minutes or so of driving. When we got home at 11:30pm it took just a 5 minute cuddle from Daddy to settle him back into his cot.

To top it all off, much to our pleasure and surprise, in the morning Linus decided to forgo his recent couple of weeks of waking at 6am (which damages his parents’ wellbeing), and let us sleep in until 7:19am. What a luxury!

Orana Park

On Saturday, the whole family – including Aunty Andi and Uncle Matt – went to Orana Park, a wildlife park on the outskirts of Christchurch.

It was a beautiful day, and Linus lasted really well. I won’t speak for the others, but I certainly enjoyed myself. I saw a saddleback and a porcupine (different enclosures!), saw a tiger getting fed, saw some graceful lemurs, some zebra behinds, and a lot of animals sleeping.
I think it’s one of those things that Linus is a little bit young to appreciate fully. He enjoyed seeing the animals, and we got a lot of “Ooooh!!”s and pointing out of him, but he gets just as excited when he sees a cat, or a bird, or a truck. He doesn’t yet realise that seeing a giraffe, tiger, or rhinoceros is a rare treat.

Linus Cuteness

Linus did a couple of cute things this weekend. (Of course he did thousands of cute things, but these two were particularly noteworthy.)

Last night when Linus was trying to get back to sleep in the car after tea, I tucked his woolly hoody over him to keep him warm. When I turned to look at him a few minutes later, he was playing with the hoody in the earnest way he loves to play with clothes at the moment. (It’s so earnest, I feel like I’m insulting him by calling it “play”!)

When I turned to look at him a few minutes after that, I was amused to see that he had his hoody completely up over his face, head and shoulders, and wasn’t moving. A couple of minutes later he still hadn’t moved, and I was sure he was asleep. I guess he found his own way of keeping the light from oncoming cars out of his eyes!

(It turns out he wasn’t asleep, and a few minutes later had taken the hoody off his head. Perhaps it was a little too snug under there!)

The other cuteness was when I was feeding him a cheese slice at Aunty Andi’s. He has a game at the moment where he hides things behind his back and pretends to look for them. He started doing this with the cheese slice, so I said “No, darling, food isn’t for playing with, food goes on your plate or in your tummy”. So naturally Linus lifted up his shirt and tried to put his cheese slice into his tummy via his belly-button!

Bug = 1 year 7 months 3 days
Bub = due in 113 days

I struggled and struggled to find a good name for my little (90%-chance-of-) girl, and was surprised how hard it was. I’d rejected the girl names we had last time (my favourite has since become too common!), so I re-hunted through all the names from Roman and Greek mythology. Unfortunately the few names I found were vetoed by Bob (who wasn’t much good at serious suggestions, but was quite good at vetoing).

So I was surprised when I came home one night and Bob told me he’d found a name. He told me the name… I thought “Ok… I don’t hate it…”, and he told me his reasons for choosing it… and I was hooked. Apart from not being from classics, the name was lovely and perfect.

So Bub now (as of a few weeks ago) has a name. We’re trying very hard not to use it out loud much (although we’ve got Linus to try to say it quite a few times). We’re also not telling anyone what the name we’ve chosen is: I don’t want to deal with a whole bunch of opinions – positive or negative – before the name has actually been assigned.

I also don’t want us, or the rest of the family, to be too committed to the name before Bub arrives. You never know whether your perfect name will be a perfect match to your perfect child! One of our cats (Jasper) was called “Chester” for a week, but although we quite liked the name it just never suited him. So I’m quite prepared for the name we’ve chosen for Bub to not suit her at all. Then, of course, we’d have to fall back on the classics name that I love that was vetoed by Bob. What a pity!

Bug = 1 year 6 months 27 days
Bub = due in 120 days

My Dad and I were just sitting here at the computers, and Bug wandered off to his bedroom. He’s been sick and grizzly for a couple of days, so when he started grizzling, Dad and I ignored him.

Then we ignored him for a bit longer.

Then we commented on how strange his sustained crying sounded: at times it seemed like full-on crying, then changed to grizzling, and occasionally stopped altogether or was interrupted by an exclamation. My finely-tuned mother’s ear knew the crying was more than grizzling, but less than “I’m stuck and need urgent help”.

Finally the cry became distressed enough that I had to go and find out what was wrong. I found Bug standing on the top shelf of his bookshelf (about 70cm off the ground) with one foot on the shelf and one on his encyclopedias. The reason for the distress was that he was stuck, and couldn’t get down (or even shift either of his feet). And I assume the reason for the interruptions to the distress was that he occasionally saw a bird or a person or a car out of the window and forgot about his troubles.