A welcome addition - with a bang!

Yesterday morning I had a bit of a shock!

I was getting ready for work, hubby was in the bathroom, and his phone goes off.  I checked it, it was my brother-in-law, he'd rang twice.  I rang him back, no answer.  Weird.  Jokingly I said "Maybe they're having a baby now!"

My sister-in-law (SIL) was due last Monday but if they baby hadn't come by today, they were going into hospital to get induced.  My SIL and I had worked out what was happening with my nephew who goes to school with my daughter, and the plan was that he stay with us.

So I got into my car and my SIL calls me, hangs up.  I call her back, no reply.  I only drive another 50m down the road and hubby calls.  "They just had a baby at home, on the floor!  There's no ambulance or anything, can you go over?"

"OMG!" I said, and did an about turn, and headed to their house.  I rang work to tell them I would be a bit late, and rushed to their house.

Fortunately, everything had gone well, but it was a bit of a shock.  She had woken up with some pain, and told my brother-in-law that they were 5 minutes apart.  He didn't know you could call 000 from your mobile phone (that's our emergency dial number in Australia) and so he went downstairs to make the phone call.  My sis-in-law yelled out "The baby's coming!  The baby's coming out!"  and my brother-in-law thought "Yeah right, not that quick," but a minute later he heard a baby crying.  He told me he was a bit stunned - he wanted to go up and see the baby but he was on the phone to the ambulance!  He wished that he had helped  deliver his own son.

By the time I arrived the paramedics had arrived and they had packed her up in a stretcher.  I took my new nephew from my SIL and did a quick check and he seemed fine - good tone, good colour, breathing was a bit grunty but no sucking in of the chest, and his heart beat was good.  I hugged my SIL telling her how clever she was and quickly went to put on my shoes and ran out with the baby in my arms to give it back to her in the ambulance (I went out the side door, they took her out the back door).  I took a photo of her and the baby and of us and the baby and then I was all grins and smiles as I drove to work as I relayed the exciting story of my nephew's entry into the world to all my workmates.

My SIL told me that it was so quick - she woke up, and had the contractions and she timed it, and they were close together, she went to the toilet, her waters broke and then she felt like she needed to push and 1 or 2 contractions later, she had a baby.  All up - 7 contractions.  She couldn't believe it. And she said it was about 10-15 minutes from pain to baby.  So quick she couldn't even get in the car to get to hospital.

We visited her later that evening with all the kids, and she was so happy to see all the kids, and I asked her a bit more about it.  She said that she went to the toilet and her waters broke and then she stood up and she felt the head coming!  She tried to awkwardly catch the head while standing/squatting and she said it was so strange, she felt the hair, it didn't seem real!  There was blood all over the floor, and then he was out, and she was holding the baby.

Her screams had woken up her son who walked out sleepily to the bathroom and he saw his mum holding the baby.  He asked her why there was blood on the floor.  My SIL told him to go to the drawer and get the blanket for the baby and he did and he handed it to her.  She wrapped the baby and by that time her hubby had come back upstairs to the spectacle.

He told me that she looked like Daenarys Stormborn with her baby dragons, when he saw her kneeling there on the floor with a baby in her hands.  He wished that he had hung up on 000 so that he could have seen the birth of his own son.  I felt bad for him, I imagine that would have been so miraculous for him to see.

But I am an aunty again!  I have been so excited all day and it's always wonderful to have such a happy miracle occur in such an amazing way.

Cannes Lion Award for The Guardian's "Three Little Pigs"

This awesome ad for the Guardian Newspaper won a Cannes Lion award and it's not hard to see why! It's intelligent, and shows how everyone who reads the Guardian gets involved and goes from topic to topic, turning a simple crime into a good hard look at the society failures from the GFC. Brilliant!

Kakapo - featured on "Last Chance to See"

When I visited New Zealand with my husband 11 years ago, I was really impressed by the bird life there.  So many flightless birds!  Some were very rare, and I was excited to see the Takahe and hear the story of how this bird was found when it was thought to be extinct.

However, there was one rare bird which we didn't get to see - and that's because they are only found on one island in an intense breeding program - the Kakapo.

The Kakapo was featured on an episode of the BBC program "Last Chance to See" and there was one bit in particular which was fantastic to see and that was a male Kakapo named Sirroco who tried to mate with zoologist Mark Carwadine's head!  Since then, this particular kakapo has got his own facebook page, a twitter account and tours New Zealand like the celebrity that he is.  Here is the footage from youtube:


There are less than 150 kakapo remaining, and one of the interesting things about these birds is that their breeding depends an the amount of rimu fruit.  The magical number of fruiting trees required to trigger breeding is 11% - one year they had over 30% which meant there was a huge boost in the kakapo population!

One day I hope to be able to see a kakapo.  Perhaps, I can encourage one of the kids to be a conservationist and participate in the kakapo conservation program and send me pictures of these fantastic rare and amazing birds.

You can read more about kakapo here at Kakapo recovery.

Yu Minh Is Ainm Dom

I saw this short film on my friend Mataoka's World of Warcraft Blog, and I wanted to keep it somewhere so I could watch it again and show people.

I think it's very well made!  It's poignant, well shot, and very professional.  And I really love that line about "Did you know old Paddy could speak Chinese??" LOL

Avengers LEGO

OMG, I must have this!  I saw them on a blog of someone who commented on my World of Warcraft Blog.  Check out their pics with the Lego minifigs and the actors in the background!

There are so many sets on Lego.com.  I think I have my birthday and Christmas wish lists all sorted out now!  Images from marvelsuperheroes.log.com.

6869 Quinjet Aerial Battle

6868 Hulk's Helicarrier breakout

6865 Captain America's Avenging Cycle

6867 Loki's Cosmic Cube Escape

Look and the little Tesseract!!!  If you go to youtube, you can see a whole heap of people making movies with their minifigs.  OMG, this has got to be one of the most AWESOME play sets ever :)

There is also one X-Men Lego too with Wolverine and Magneto in it - I do like that as well (go check it out on the website) but this post is about Avengers Lego!

New Playground at Blaxland Riverside Park

Hubby has been going bike riding around Olympic Park and noticed a new playground that was really large, and was saying we should take the kids there.  He took the kids there with my sister in law and her son, and they had a great time.

So today, weather was good so we set out to go to the park.  I was quite excited to see it because they had photos from last time and the kids looked like they really enjoyed it.

So here are some pictures of what they have at the park.

Directly opposite the car park is this section, with swings, a small net for climbing, balance poles, and a round swing which can sit a few children on it.  Erika likes climbing on the cargo net.

Further afield there are these great slides, 5 in total.  There are also rock climbing hand holds to go up the hill as well, which is great fun for adults as well as the children with some climbs more challenging than others.

Just next to the slides is this cool round dish, which spins around, and can seat quite a number of children.

Next to the round spinning dish are two tunnels, which are great for the kids to crawl through, though Julian can get through it standing upright still.  Hard on the knees though!

This awesome cargo net looks a bit advanced but Erika did climb a little bit on this "spider web" coming from the shortest climb (shown closest here, the black net) and managed to get to almost to the other climb up (on the far side of the net) but slipped and got scared so I had to climb up and go get her.

These two things are quite cool and I haven't seen them in a park before.  Thre is a flying fox on the left, and here on the right is a big rope swing where multiple people can sit on it and swing.

Yishay Orr in the paper!

There was an article in the paper about a friend of mine (we used to be good friends, but lost touch) in the SMH online today.  I was trying to legally get a copy to put in my blog... and it costs over $1000 to do that!  Stuff that!  So I ended up copying and pasting the article so I can stick it right into here.

Yish has won tons of prizes (being the brililant girl that she is) - she was just shy of the medal in Uni but she won a different prize (can't remember what!), she was Intern of the Year in 1999 (well the rest of us can't compare to her!), the Ralph Reader prize for clinical cardiology research, and who knows what other prizes she has won.

I have to admit that's a dreadful photo!  She looks much better than that in real life.

I am sure that all of our friends who know her are extremely proud of her!  I think I might SMS her and tell her congratulations as well as tell her what a dreadful photo that is!  And she says that she doesn't get to exercise... her version of exercise is running a 20km run every day with 2 hours of gym.  I don't think many people can do that anyway.

I have to say I feel lucky I chose my profession and am not that intellectual.  My profession was an easier path and though probably not as intellectually stimulating or physically challenging as what Yish is doing, it makes me happy.  Yish would only ever be happy doing something that challenged her in every aspect. 

Black Lab

A long time ago when I was trying to find music for my WoW videos I was looking specifically at Transformers things and didn't like the theme songs that they had, but I read some comments somewhere that there was a really good Transformers theme rendition done by this group called Black Lab.  So I went looking for it and liked it so much that I bought that particular song.  That was the first time I had ever bought an mp3.

Since then I get emails every now and then from Paul Durham from Black Lab saying new songs on site, friend me on facebook, myspace etc... and I never did really go back and look at their music, but then the last email said that one of their songs has been featured in some TV shows!  The Shield and it was on House, which was pretty cool since that's a popular show and would give them heaps of exposure.  Anyway so I went and listened to the song and bought it as well.  Here is the clip here (taken from the Black Lab website)






Though if you ask me, the cover of this new album is rather raunchy - naked chick!  I should have bought the whole album instead of the one song!  Check out this cover.

 So I got bought their new album Two Strangers, as well as Passion leaves a trace, and the B sides... so I'm sitting around waiting for the email to appear so I can listen to my new music! 

My laugh of the day - Orthopaedics vs Anaesthesia

Optus Socceroos vs African Animals video

Rockin Green Laundry Powder - I want to try some!

Saw heaps of posts about Rockin Green Powder on nappyaddicts forum - it's a laundry powder that has been designed especially for use with cloth nappies.  Phosphate free and supposedly eco friendly it has been getting rave reviews that I want to get some now too to try!  People have been doing soaks and been amazed about how much crap is coming out of the nappies even after they're clean.

Link to Rockin Green on Facebook!

Unfortunately it's sold out from ecocubs.com so they won't have any till mid June.  Can't wait to get my hands on a sample and see for myself how great it is.

Trunki - my lastest "I want" item

I was looking for Gruffalo things and came across a Gruffalo Trunki.  But there are so many Trunkis, I thought I have to have one!  They're absolutely adorable!

What is a Trunki, I hear you ask!

It's a suitcase for kids - they can ride on it, sit on it, pull it along by themselves, and they can pack all their stuff into it.  It's got 4 wheels, and a nice saddle top, and they come in cute designs (like Grufallo!  There was also a cow one - both cow and Gruffalo are limited editions).

You can read more about Trunki at the Trunki website.

Peter's of Kensington has Trunki's quite cheap.  So tempted to get one.  Probably will end up getting one.

Rentachook - Chickens in Suburbia

Watching all of this River Cottage stuff with hubby makes me want to grow my own food and have my own chickens.  There is a guy in Sydney who rents chicken coops and chickens (Rentachook), and for $380 you get a chicken coop for 2 chickens, 2 chickens, and some feeding things for the chickens.  After 6 weeks if you don't want to keep the chickens you give it back, and you get $280 back.  So basically $100 for 6 weeks!





I'd like to give it a go.  But mum says that chickens are messy and make poo everywhere and thinks it's a bad idea.  One of my colleagues at work also told me that there are lots of diseases that chickens can get that you have to be aware of and one of those includes some kind of mites the chickens get on their feet, which ended up with that person's kids having bites all over their legs.  Eeew.  So at this stage it looks like there will be no chickens.  Hopefully when the kids are a bit bigger we can have chickens and then have some eggs too.  And I was so looking forward to having chickens.

Fabrics I want!

There are so many things you can do with nice fabric.  You can add scraps into your scrapbooks, do patchwork, make bibs, nappies or theatre caps!

Here is a fabric that I can't find anywhere in Australia!  One of the O&G registrars at Liverpool had a hat with this material and I oh-so-want!!! (Picture from Kaufman website)