I've added a counter to the homepage that shows how many days until we move in. I'm very excited - the house has an Orange Tree, Lemon Tree, Walnut Tree and heaps of Feijoa trees. We will be self sufficient almost when we get some chickens. And maybe a cow!! (Maybe not)

Beth's doing well, she's still a bit hard to settle at night quite often, but apart form that she's going from strength to strength. She has her final visit with Claire the Midwife today, I can't wait to hear how much she weighs. I reckon it'll be more than 5kgs she seems so heavy, but it's probably not going to be that much really. Edit: She's 4.7kg!

Sarah's upload some great pictures of Beth to her Flickr account. Some you'll have seen, some you won't have.

Sunday night we went around to Holly and Adrian's for dinner...

We went to the auction today, it seemed when we got there that there might be a few other people bidding. Holly and Age came as well to support us! When the auction started there were no bids at all. In fact the agent had come over beforehand to suggest I should make the opening bid. Anyway it turns out we were the only people bidding on the day, everyone else was there to see the outcome. I think a few people wanted to make conditional offers. But we got it, within the range we were going to bid up to should there have been any competition.

So we are now going to be the owners of four thousand square metres of land. Holy crap that's a lot of land and a lot of work. We had a chat to the current owners (they're so lovely) and they said they...

We're going to go to Auction tomorrow on this property. Wish us luck! I've never bid at an auction before, but I've been to a few so I think I know what I'm doing. Mostly you just put your hand up and hope it's your hand still up when the auctioneer says "SOLD!" We'll see how we go.

Beth's been really good this week. A few times getting fussy and being unsettled, but she does seem to be happier. She's slower to go from being happy to being screaming. She's very cute, she likes to hold one fist in the air while feeding, she looks like she's screaming "Power To The Man!". I am, of course, projecting. Here she is looking very cute. She's fast asleep here, even though it doesn't look like she is.
She makes the cutest little noises too while you're changing her or she's feeding...

Bethany will be 1 month old tomorrow! Everywhere we take her (quite a few places) everyone says "Wow that's a small baby, she must be very new!"
We looked a few more open home this weekend, one was a repeat one we'd seen up on Napier Hill, plus a repeat of the one in Jervoistown.

We've had a fairly good week I think, Sarah's been home all alone during the day to look after Beth while I've gone to work. It's been ok, I have slept in the spare room a few times so that I get a decent night's sleep ready for work. So Sarah really has a lot to do, though I try and help out early in the morning before I go to work.

Beth's been quite hard to get settled, she'll eat and then want to sleep, but then will wake as soon as she's put...

Beth weighed in at 4 Kilograms yesterday. That's really good progress, so we're both very happy! And so's Beth, she had a couple of really bad days a few days ago, we were both stressed and tried and ugh. But that seems to be behind us, at least for the moment, Beth's feeding really well and sleeping very well too.

Sunday we trooped around the place looking at open homes, we found one that we quite like, so hopefully that might progress a bit further. We'll take Peter and Mary around this weekend and we'll try and see how much traffic noise there is, that's my primary concern.

Sunday night we went to Holly and Adrian's for dinner, lovely Pork Roast. We tried giving Beth her first bottle (of breastmilk!) and she woofed it down. No confusion about what the bottle was or anything, just slurp slurp slurp. We've fed...

Sigh - we're into that part of baby ownership where it's hard and it seems like there's no end in sight. Beth is only sleeping for an hour, maybe two, at a time before waking. This means that Sarah only gets maybe an hour if she's lucky of sleep, before she wakes again. Hopefully it'll get better soon, we'll talk to Claire today to see what sage and fantastic advice she can give us.
I've also had a resurgence of my flu, I felt terrible yesterday. So yeah, yesterday was pretty rough for everyone.

Otherwise not much else to report really, Beth's Birth Certificate arrived yesterday. That was nice. Now when people say "Do you have a baby?" I can say "Yes! Here's the official documentation!".

Peter and Mary have gone to the Alpaca convention for the weekend, so it'll just be the three of us here at home. And...

Beth's now two weeks old! Time is really flying by, it doesn't feel like two weeks at all. It's my last week off work this week, back to work next week. That'll be hard for both of us, me because of the broken sleep we get and for Sarah of course because she'll be home by herself with Beth. The good thing is that work isn't too far away so I can always zip home quickly if she needs any major help.

The last few days are all a bit of a blur really, I'm going to try my best to remember.
Friday we went to the Mission Gardens for lunch with everyone, that was quite nice. Friday night was a lovely roast lamb at Holly and Adrian's. Beth hadn't settled all day though so we had to leave early when she just wouldn't settle at all.

Saturday afternoon...

Claire came by yesterday afternoon and weighed Beth again. She's put on 50g in 3 days which is pretty good, as long as she's gaining weight and not losing it, that's the main thing.

Yesterday morning we went to the last "Baby and You" session, which is the extension from the Ante Natal group. Basically everyone just gets together and talks. We took Beth, and the whole session pretty much ended up being us two being asked heaps of questions by all the other expectant mothers. I was the only bloke to turn up, slackers! It was good though, it was nice to show Beth to everyone else expecting and to tell them what the whole birth experience had been like. My main comment was the fact that Hastings Hospital really doesn't give partners any support at all, so to be prepared for that fact.
Beth was very well...

We had to take Beth back to the hospital for a kidney scan yesterday. When Sarah had her last ante natal scan they found that one of her kidneys is slightly dilated. We got her out to the scan in good time, all packed up in the car seat. She was pretty well behaved for the scan too, helped by the fact she'd been fed within the last hour. The only bad bit was at the end where she decided to pee all over the show. We should have known that was going to happen though, the Ultrasound lady had even said 3 minutes earlier "Wow that's a very full bladder she's got there!"

Her kidney is still dilated, but half as much as it was in the womb so it's going in the right direction. Hopefully when she has her followup scan in a couple of weeks it'll be...