zoe and mummy

deutsch or australian?

both! luckily citizenship is not an either/or matter anymore, not even for the germans. the aussies have always been pretty cool about dual citizenship, and now, thanks to the old red-green government, the germans have followed suit. of course, germans being germans, getting a german passport is a slightly more bureaucratic affair than with the aussies. for the latter, we just had to fill in an application form, sign it, add two photos of zoe and send it off. two weeks later the document should arrive by mail. for the german passport, both vivien and I had to show up at the consulate, fill in the application, sing the national anthem (ok, not quite) and wait for about two months. but that´s nothing in comparison with applying for a german birth certificate for zoe. not only do they need both of our birth certificates (original not copy) and want to see my uni diploma, it takes them roughly a year to get the thing done. must be one overworked department in berlin.

so smiley

zoe has been sooooo smiley of late it has made the time we spend together even more enjoyable! although her laugh or rather giggle is still silent she has managed a squeal or two on the change table so i'm certain a real laugh isn't too far off!

left-itis

our daughter has left-itis, suppose it's better than right-itis! she much prefers looking left and although we have devised many tricky ways to make her look the other way she seems to be a stubborn one. i was a little concerned at first, especially since they can develop a flat head on the favoured side, but after learning that pretty much all other babies have similar issues i'm just prevailing with our tactics. here is us practising the right side...

trip to the flicks (one is louder than the others)

so this quite accurately depicts how zoe (far left) reacted to hanging out with her friends (i.e. my mothers groups babies) not only at this picnic but also on our first outing to the cinema. as we pushed our numerous prams into the cinema, struggling to find room for all of them, a nana asked if this was a 'regular' showing and unfortunately for her we had to answer yes. i must admit i felt a tad awkward given zoe was already loudly chatting away to herself. retrospectively picking a 2 and half hour film with oodles of scarey bits and a copiusly loud sound system was not a good idea! i spent the better half of the film hanging out near the back bin having my bum go numb trying to get zoza to quieten down. next trip to the cinema will most definately be to a proper 'mums and bubs' session so i can let her exercise those already strong vocal cords in freedom and i won't have to feel guilty at all.

nascent vanity

dummy?

jens and i have confronted the age old dilemma of dummy or no dummy. although we have a dummy sterilised and at the ready, zoe didn't take to it too well and we still haven't really made up our minds either. for the moment both jens and zoe are contented with various lumps, bumps and digits of jens's hands.

sleep

sleep is precious, especially with a baby. after two months of wanting to feed every two or maximum three hours, even in the middle of the night, zoe suddenly switched her rhythm. since the beginning of the week she will now sleep five or even six hours in a row. usually she´ll finally fall asleep at about 9 or 9.30 and vivien will wake her up around midnight to "top her up" (so called dream feed I am told), so that she´ll then sleep through till about 5.30 or 6. at first she surprised us so much with that sudden change that vivien still woke up at 2.30, expecting to be on duty any minute. now, she is cherishing those hours of uninterrupted sleep.

needles

imagine getting an injection the length of your leg jabbed into you?!? poor zoe had her second lot of immunisations today. thankfully they have minimized the 4 immunisations into 2 injections so one in each chunky thigh. although she screamed the place down it only lasted long enough for me to get the boob out. i however must have looked rather frazzled even after a half hour feed cause the doctor asked me numerous times if i was ok! later the same day we were all smiles again though.

slip slop slap

how long do you think it will take me to grow into these?

Percentiles

Both Zoe and I had our 6-8 week check up this week and even though we were a few days overdue for it we still passed with flying colours! Zoe is now 61cm long (Jens is very proud that she has finally cracked the 60cm mark), 5.23 kg heavy and she has a head circumference of 38 cms. In the baby world the only thing that counts is PERCENTILES. So Zoe's length is in the 90th percentile however her head circumference is in the 45th percentile, hmm wonder what that means?
Today also marks an exciting head lifting or rather holding event...

41 degrees

what a way to start the new year: 41 degrees. that´s the hottest first day of the year on record. out west, in penrith, it´s supposed to be 45. we are struggling to survive without air-condition; especially zoe is not happy. even here in bondi, close to the beach it isn´t much better as there is no wind. our fan is chugging away at full speed and we´ve set up bowls of ice water but it doesn´t seem to help much. zoe is pretty cranky. of course the ocean is lovely, but you have to get out of the water at some point, and then it´s hot again and a sunburn isn´t far. happy hot new year!