Pregnancy Prescience...

The other day I introduced you to the fur kids, my two little cats that I hand raised from teeny weeny, close eyed, squeaking little rats.

Back in September, before I knew I was pregnant, the Ginger Ninja, Harry Cat, started behaving a little oddly.

Harry Cat

He became uncharacteristically affectionate, when he wanted to be, and took to sitting on my tummy and kneeding and massaging it with his paws! This behaviour started suddenly and was highly unusual given his somewhat grumpy and bossy nature, but we just chalked it up to being another one of Harry's eccentricities.

In hindsight we realised that the behaviour started around the time that I would've conceived!

Only Harry will ever really know if he knew what was going on before we did, but it's kind of cool to think that he did!!

Another story of pregnancy prescience came courtesy of The Man's Master 5, the youngest boy in the gaggle. Last time the gaggle came to visit us was about two weeks after we'd found out that I was pregnant and we had made a firm decision that no one was going to be told until we were sure that the pregnancy was going to stick.

One day while in the car with his dad, cheeky Master 5 piped up out of the blue with "I think Yaeli's got a baby in her tummy!" When his dad asked why he thought so, Master 5 qualified his supposition with the arguement that "There's a baby in there because she's got a fat tummy!"
The Man countered with , "But maybe she's just been eating too much sushi mate." Which was met with a knowledgable and defiant "No, she definitely has a baby in there and it's going to be a girl", from Master 5.

We would've put it down as coincidence except Master 5 has a history of predicting babies and genders. He's now two for two after predicting his little sister a couple of years ago, and his little girl cousin earlier this year.

Given that we're waiting for the sprog to drop to find out the gender, it'll be another 6 months before we can confirm his prediction. But we were still expecting an "I told you so" when we broke the news to the gaggle on Christmas Day!!!

Do you believe in pregnancy predictions and foreknowledge?

It's official...

So Christmas Day was the big day for making the big announcement about our monster.

We finally managed to get a hold of The Man's four existing monsters, who live overseas, to let them know, and then it ws open slather to break the news to the rest of the family, with mixed responses.

My mum seemed really excited. My dad sounded a bit confused and I think for a moment thought we were buying him a dog or something before the penny dropped and he realised what I was saying. The Man's parents were stoked. And my 95 year old grandmother told me not to get too fat.
Other significant people in our lives were also thrilled, which was great.

The general consensus seemed to be "Well done". I still can't quite work out what they mean by that... Are they congratulating us on knowing how to have sex? Or on getting it "right"? It kinda sounds like they think we put an wful lot of hard work and study into having a baby, as if we had passed an exam or something. I find it rather hilarious.

Unfortunately, yesterday, my mum rang and took the whole shine off the 'we're having a baby" thing by letting rip with both barrels about how selfish we were for waiting until 16 weeks to tell her, and how The Man was taking me away from the family to give birth in Melbourne (despite the fact that she lives in New Zealand and the only family I have left in Sydney is my father, and his wife, The SheDevil, who are rather useless in terms of support).

It's all a bit much for me to process at the moment and has left me feeling rather resentful that with any big annoucement in my life she seems to counteract with some kind of drama about how I'm letting her down.

But hey, it'll all come out in the wash. And hopefully she'll rein everything in in order to be involved with her first grandchild!

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas, and are looking forward to an exciting New Years celebration this coming weekend!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight...

Christmas cracker joke of the year:

Q: What did the martian say to the petrol pump?

A: Take your finger out of your ear when I'm talking to you!

Hope you all had a fabulous day!

What was your favourite Christmas cracker joke ths year?

Cloth Convert

Over at The Adams Family, SarahAnnah88 has been extolling the virtues of soakers over cloth nappies, and wonderful wool.

All of this nappy talk got me thinking... What was I going to do?

I suppose cloth nappying had always felt kind of natural to me, although in my experiences with other people's children I had experienced both. But to my mind cloth nappying was all about terry cloth squares, and washing and delivery services, and trying to keep the damn things white. All things that I thought were going to be difficult, nay, impossible, here in Vanuatu!

I kind of resigned myself to the fact that disposables would be easier for us when bubs comes along, especially given we won't be living in our own home, or even country for the first 2 - 4 weeks (all things going well). I'd also resigned myself to the fact that we'd have to ship in boxes of Huggies from Australia in an attempt to reduce costs by avoiding the sometimes obscene prices that we see placed upon imported goods here in a country where almost everything is imported!

But after reading SarahAnnah88's posts about wool and its use as a soaker, and a lovely comment from her about what brands of cloth nappies she uses, I decided to get Googling and quickly I discovered two great Australian companies who design and manufacture the most amazing cloth nappies that I never could've imagined!!

Both Baby BeeHinds and Greenkids have the most incredibly designed and patterned cloth nappies, but I think the Greenkids ones are my favourites!

The Greenkids design is made up of a waterproof outer layer, a wicking inner layer, and a pocket into which you insert an absorbant sheet made of bamboo cotton, hemp, or microfibre to absorb the wees and wet poos, ALL of which is machine washable!!!

Who couldn't resist popping their bubbies butt into something that looked this cool??!!

Greenkids Anytime Flames

Or this cute??!!



Greenkids Funtimes Flutterby

Or this AWESOME??!!

Greenkids Minkytimes Moo

I think I've just well and truly disposed of the idea of disposables!!!!

Does anyone else use, or want to use cloth nappies? What are your thoughts?

A tale of two kitties...

AKA: An introduction to the fur children...

On the 13th of January 2011, Cyclone Vania had just passed through Vanuatu waters and battered Port Vila, the capital city, where I live, with gale force winds as it passed south of us and headed off towards New Caledonia. The weather was miserable and the waves were pounding the sea shore like this...

This same day, while sharing cyclone stories with other locals at the favoured cafe, I bumped into a friend of mine who was working at the local vets. After chatting for a little while, she presented me with an unusual challenge. To handraise four 2 day old kittens that had been dropped off at the vets the day before.

I have never been a cat lover. I always hated the way they rubbed round your ankles when they wanted food, and I'd grown up with large dogs, like dobermans, alsatians and rottweilers. I was a dog person through and through. But upon hearing of these little pusskat's plight, and realising that I had nothing better to do with my time, I decided to give it a crack. Little did I realise that the decision would change me completely.

That day I went to the vets office, learned how to make hot water bottles, mix formula and bottle feed the babies, and within an hour I left with a box of four itty bitty kitties that looked just like this...

I took them home, much to The Man's horror and amusement, and set about feeding and toileting the squiggling, close eyed little buggers every two to three hours (even in the middle of the night)! They all shared a teeny little bottle that had a little rubber teat on the end with a pinhole in it which they'd suck on. In the early days 20 mls of formula was all that was required for each feed for ALL of them!

After a few days, one of the babies stopped sucking and her legs went a bit funny. After 24 hours of intensive care (and a few tears from the "I don't like cats" lady), the decision was made to put this poor little creature to sleep and send her off to kitty heaven... :o(

And then there were three...

Three gorgeous kitties who soon opened their eyes and started wandering around the house, and who began their journey with me, from crayons to perfume, so to speak.

By the end of the month the little critters were getting around looking like this...

And by the end of the second month they were ready to find homes. The white one was placed with a friend of mine who desperately wanted a white cat to replace her other cat that had been hit by a car. However, we ran into a snag homing the other two... Particularly after The Man picked up the Ginger Ninja, looked him in the eye, and told him "you're staying with me aren't you mate". Can't blame him though. Who wouldn't want a kitten that does this???!!!

So after divesting ourselves of the white cat, and The Man "bagsing" the Ginger Ninja for himself, we were left with trying to find a home for the slightly "slow" sister, who had always been a little bit behind the others and isn't quite the full quid.

In the end, we couldn't find a suitable taker for her, so she ended up happily staying with us and her brother...

The pusskats are much, much bigger now, and have each developed unique personalities of their own. I'm not entirely convinced that they know they're cats. They come to a whistle, sneak dog food out of the dog food bin, and do their best to be included in the human being meal times as if it's their birthright. But the most remrkable thing is that they've converted me. From being a dog person through and through, to loving (some, ok 2) cats.

After all the time nd effort that we've put into these little critters, I often say that I love them "as if they came out of my tummy". And while they may face some competition on that front in June next year, they will still hold the place of being my first "children".

Follow up...

Yesterday I blogged about people lerning the gender of their babies and about my aversion to "gender appropriateness" or stereotyping.

From everyone's comments yesterday, it seems like most of us are on the same page when it comes to caring more about our children as human beings rather than caring about their gender, and most of us aren't keen to enforce gender stereotypes in our children's lives.

Thanks to everyone who posted their comments and opinions! It's awesome to hear how other people feel on the subject!

This morning, I logged on to my Facebook account only to see that a friend of mine had posted this link to a blog piece about how one teacher tried to combat gender bullying and stereotyping in her class in the US.

It is a fascinating read and ties in well with what I blogged about yesterday, and everyone's subsequent comments. I strongly urge anyone interested to read it.

It's nice to know that there are teachers out there who are committed to ensuring inclusivness for the students in their classes!

Let me know what you think about it!

Pink or Blue?

A popular topic at the moment on the expectant mummy forums that I read, Bellybelly and What To Expect, is finding out your baby's gender. It seems that the majority of Mummies In Progress out there are keen to find out ASAP whether they will be having a little boy or a little girl in 2012!

Today's post is inspired by Dennelle over at I guess this means we're pregnant, who tomorrow will be finding out the gender of her beloved little Bean! Her post today is, in part, about her excitement to be finding out her baby's gender tomorrow, her deep desire to be having a boy, how people judge her for having a preference for her baby's gender, and how people who say they have no preference are talking BS.

Her post really got me thinking about it all and prompted me to leave a comment long enough to be a post on its own. (Sorry Dennelle!)

According to the forums, The Man and I seem to be in the minority by choosing to wait until this sprog drops before finding out if it has boy bits or girl bits. We like the idea of a surprise.

For this pregnancy I have absolutely no preference on gender, and that's not BS. Although The Man seems to have a preference for another little princess to join his gaggle of children, I want a boy and I equally want a girl and, by the laws of reproduction, the odds are entirely in my favour to be having one or the other. Therefore, for this pregnancy anyway, the gender of my offspring is kind of a non-issue.

I think if I already had one child then I would probably have a gender preference towards the opposite of what I already had. But at the moment I'm just thrilled to be having something, rather than nothing!

I believe that the person that my child is and ends up being is much more important than what's between their legs. I'm not into the "gender appriopriateness" of colours or toys. If my boy wants to wear pink and play with dolls, I'm ok with that. Or if my girl wants to play football and tinker with cars with her dad, that's cool too!

By keeping our baby's gender a surprise, we are hoping too to limit the barrage of gender appropriate clothes, blankets, toys, etc. that I'm sure people will feel the need to purchase for us. Not being ungrateful, just noting that when a baby's gender is announced it tends to influence what kinds of presents people buy. I would rather have a closet full of green and yellow than blue and pink.

I want my child to be worldly and have a broad perspective of the world.
I want my child to be a good and kind human being, regardless of their gender.
I want my child to be more than just Pink or Blue.

What do you think? Do you, or did you, have a gender preference? Did you not get what you were hoping for? What's your story?