We tried feeding Beth some solid food yesterday. It was a mix of breast milk and avocado, made into a paste. She really wasn't too sure about the whole thing. She ate it, but it was eaten more because it happened to be in her mouth when she swallowed, not because she was actively eating it. She also made a new face we've never seen before, which we are now calling the Turtle face. It's pretty cute.

It's a public holiday here today, so I've walked Beth up to the Taradale shops while Sarah has a snooze. I'd better not stuff around for too long though, otherwise I'm going to get rained on!

Tim

Beth's 5 month's old today! Thursday night we packed up the X-Trail and headed up to Auckland. This was the first time that Beth had been on a long distance drive before, so we were a little bit nervous about how she'd go. She was pretty good though, she slept for the first hour, then when we got to Taupo we got her up for a feed and a change of scenery. She was quite unsettled when we set off again though, eventually Sarah popped her dummy in (a last minute addition to the baby bag) and she enjoyed that, dozing off to sleep for most of the rest of the journey. Even though we leave Napier about 4pm, we didn't get to Ben and Di's place until about 10:50pm. There were heaps of roadworks on the way up, a stop-go man that held us up for 15 minutes and...

We spent most of yesterday (Australia Day!) at Hastings Hospital with Beth. On Saturday afternoon Sarah had noticed 5-6 purple spots on her right leg. We didn't think too much of it, but later that night Sarah looked online to see what it might be and one of the answers was Meningitis. Sarah rung the Health Line and they said "Take her to the Dr's!" so we zipped into the Medical Centre. They took one look at her and said "That baby is way to happy to have Meningitis, but those spots are odd so go to Hastings Hospital". The thought of Hastings Hospital on a Saturday night wasn't a great one, but visit we did. The oncall paediatrician was waiting for us and checked Beth out. He agreed that it wasn't Meningitis but suggested we come back on Sunday to find out what was causing it.

So Sunday morning...

Beth seems to be teething at the moment. Or just going through a growth spurt or something. She's "reverted" back to waking up anywhere between 3-5 times a night and mostly seems quite unsettled at night. Everyone seems to think she's probably teething, which would make sense. She's loving to chew on anything at the moment and is producing more drool than a drool factory on a high production day!

Happy Birthday John Harman!

Hmmmm what else has been happening? Last Friday night Sarah, Mary, Beth and I went down to The Hot Chick for dinner. Beth timed a big tanty just as we were eating, so Mary took her for a quick spin along the boardwalk as Sarah and I ate dinner. Not quite the little family gathering we'd planned but nevermind, it was still nice. Then we got some icecreams and went for a quick walk along the...

We baked up a storm in the kitchen last night. We made plum and custard muffins, plus Sarah made ~6 bottles of Plum Jelly using her Mad Millie bits and pieces. We were a bit worried at the end of it that 3 of the jars hadn't sucked back down to form a vacuum seal, but when I got up this morning they were all sucked down tight. Yummo! I reckon we'll probably get another 5kg or so from the plum tree and then that'll be it. Can't complain though, it's been awesome! And the plums are so tasty.

I went for a jog yesterday morning, and while jogging I tripped over a rouge lace and smashed into the ground making a very touch "Oooofffffffff" sound. It was pretty awesome. I scratched up my knees and my right palm. Plus I broke my watch and my cheapie jogging phone broke...

Phew it's been a hot two days! Today has been a real stinker of a day, really hot outside. Luckily the pool man returned yesterday with our pool pump, turns out it was just the capacitor in it that'd broken, so it just needed to be replaced and we're back in action again. I've also been able to put the pump on a timer, so now the pool will "self clean" every day, we just need to vacuum out the larger bits of crap etc once or twice a week.

Saturday Morning Beth woke up about 6am, as she likes to do. I got up then and went and sprayed lots of weeds with my backpack weed sprayer, then we went for a walk with Beth to the Greenmeadows New World. Not because we really fancied going to the supermarket, but because that was the only cafe we could think...

We've spent the last 2 days at Porangahau, a small beach shack village about an hour's drive from Danniverke. Friends of Holly and Age's have a Bach there, and we, along with 3 other couples, rented the Shack (Kiwi's say Bach) next to their shack.

Our car was jammed with stuff, mostly for Bethany. Baby Bath, Baby Port-a-Cot, Baby Pram, Baby Accessories. The drive there wasn't too bad, not too windy, though it was really really windy. There were tree branches and bits of debris all over the road. We made it there without incident though. We'd actually taken a detour into Danniverke to see Wendy & Rex and the rest of the gang. Wendy made us a lovely lunch, it was fantastic.

Porangahau was really good. Bethany was fine pretty much the whole time, she slept in her port-a-cot without any complaints, I thought she might be a bit...