He's here! Introducing Newbie

He's here!  Well, actually he's been here for 3 weeks now.  I just hadn't gotten around to blogging about it (or anything else for a while).

Introducing 'Newbie'.

He looked just like his big brother at birth but a day or two later he started to look a lot like me as a baby, whereas Geekling looked just like his daddy.

Geekling is so very sweet with him, and so excited to be a big brother.  He loves to help burp his little brother, wet cloth wipes with the squirt bottle for nappy changes, read and sing to Newbie, kiss cuddle and hold him.  We haven't yet seen any jealousy or negative emotion towards his new sibling at all.

Hubby and I are a lot more relaxed as second-time parents, and I think that's helped relax Newbie a bit too.  I'm getting a reasonable amount of sleep, my boobs are doing fine and I am generally feeling much brighter and happier than I was after Geekling's arrival.

Slip cover for my glider chair

In getting the nursery ready, I had to decide what to do with my old glider.  While it works just fine, the vinyl was worn and flaky, and it looked pretty awful.

Before photo

Getting it reupholstered was going to be hideously expensive.  We considered selling and buying a cheaper feeding chair but we likely wouldn't get much money selling it given how bad it looked.

I stumbled across this glider makeover on Pinterest.  Its a much neater job than mine as the blogger has reshaped her glider beautifully to allow a nice, boxy designed cover to fit.

I bought a cheap single bed sheet in a nice dark colour and got chopping.  I made a fitted-sheet style cushion cover for the seat as it does not detatch but flips up, them sewed two larger pieces for the backrest and a fiddlier piece for the arm rests and front-skirt.

Here it is - Its not as neat as the other blogger's but its a grand improvement!

Queenslander!

Geekling is a proud Queenslander, particularly around this time of year in the middle of State of Origin football season.  For those not familiar with the game, Queensland players wear maroon and for every year Geekling has been alive and several before it, Queensland have dominated their New South Wales opponents who wear light blue.  

Geekling knows his maroon football jersey is a Queensland jersey.  But he also seems to think that the colour maroon is called "Queensland"!

These are last year's photos.  I must get a photo of Geekling in his jersey next Wednesday for the final and tie-breaking match of this year.

Its a BOY!

7 weeks ago we were told during a routine 20 week scan that our Newbie is a girl.  The sonographer was certain.  But just last week I had to have a further scan as I had been experiencing some pains, and our little she is actually a he!  We're having another little BOY! There was no doubt about it, the new sonographer showing me some very explicit images during the scan!

Luckily, we hadn't gotten rid of Geeklings old clothes and hadn't spent much on girls clothes and decorations.  I've packed away the girls items and am unpacking Geekling's old things.

Telling Geekling he was getting a little brother rather than a sister wasn't too bad.  At first he thought we meant he was getting one of each, but he now understands he's getting a little brother - a boy just like him.  He is no more or less excited than he was to be having a sister, I think he's just thrilled to have a baby.

Learning about... Germany!

Geekling got given a felt world map for Christmas the year before last.  I had also collected a number of cultural exchange packages from penpals around the world and put them aside until he was of an age that he was interested.

I remembered them a couple of weeks ago while Geekling was home sick and I was racking my brain for things to do.  I hung his map on the blank wall by his bed and we opened our first exchange package - it was from Germany!

Waiting patiently to open it!

Look at what I got!

What a pack it was!  It included a lovely letter from a family in Germany, a map showing where Germany was in Europe which helped Geekling to find it on his map, postcards, a flag to colour in, some tourism fliers, a puzzle, stickers, Euro coins, a miniature flag, foam soccer ball shapes and soccer ball balloons, german flag bandaid and some chocolates.

Geekling was super excited about the chocolates.  He was also fascinated by the coins and really enjoyed colouring the flag by reference to the miniature flag.  He also loved the balloons.

As luck would have it, days later we met a young German lady on the train!  Geekling proudly told her he had learned about Germany, knew their flag colours and liked German chocolate.

Home made change mat cover

The baby-sewing has begun!

I'm not into pastels, or pink.  I couldn't find a nice, bright change mat cover in a colour I liked, so I decided to sew my own.  I had planned to use minky, but it was $23 a meter! This gorgeous purple crushed velvet was only $4 a meter, though it was very slippery and difficult to sew with.

I used 1 meter of material and 1 meter of elastic ($1/m) per mat.  So they cost $5 each!  I made two as I know they'll need to be washed pretty often, so a spare will be handy.

I followed this tutorial, but rather than folding the material and cutting one corner out, I lay my material flat on the loungeroom floor, traced my change mat, then cut away the corners.  From there it went pretty well as per the tutorial.

Here's the finished product - I love the colour, the lustre and its sooooo soft that I wish I had something like this under my bare bum regularly!

I might make more in future as baby shower gifts, but will definitely use a different fabric that is easier to work with!

Cutting my boys' hair

I had decided that I'd learn to cut hubby and Geekling's hair as part of my '30 before 30' list.  I figured this would save us a little bit of money, and I remember my mum cutting our hair as a kid.

A $20 pair of hairdressing scissors and some common sense is all it took to cut hubby's hair.

Geekling had been getting his hair shaved to a #3 with clippers at the last couple of hairdresser visits, so I figured I'd do the same.  I thought we had clippers.  But we didn't.  So I used hubby's beard trimmer...

It took far too long and he got quite upset.  Nothing a cuddle and a lollipop couldn't fix, but we didn't try clippers again.  Next time I cut his hair just as I would hubby's and he was fine.

A much better result and a much happier boy.

So by now I've given hubby 3 or 4 haircuts now and Geekling 2 or 3, plus the disastrous first try in which I shaved him.  I don't think we'll be headed back to the hairdresser any time soon.