drennan a day

a daily dose of the Cape Town Drennan's

Posts in Category: Uncategorized

If you need an opinion…

On September 24, 2012 - Uncategorized

Catching some flies

Grace has been much calmer around Eli and has been super sweet by helping out how ever she can, fetching nappies, wet wipes, blankets and trying to comfort her brother while he has nappy changes (usually by attempting to force feed him a dummy). She is certainly opinionated whenever he cries – "Think he needs boobie," "Think he needs a dummy," "Think he needs a nappy."

And then there are her classic one-liners which she comes up with regularly:

"He's drinking up all the milk. Drink up baby brother."

She gave him an imaginary chocolate and says, "Wash the chocolate down with some boobie milk!"

Family cuddles

Meet the Aunty

On September 23, 2012 - Uncategorized

Saying hello to Aunty Ker

The new Drennan family

Grace the protector

On September 22, 2012 - Uncategorized

Grace is all over Eli like a bad rash. She loves him and wants to hug him and hold him as much as possible. Unfortunately between feeding and sleeping there is very little time for general cuddles, and he is not quite big enough to play with Grace which she would love). She is also quite protective of him, chasing away cats whenever they get too close.

This has led to frustration for all of us. So far (for me at least) dealing with Grace has been one of the hardest parts of this all. It would probably help quite a bit if she would at least listen to us,

She was getting up close and personal with Donné and Eli and she was standing on Donné's feet. Donné said to Grace, "Grace, stop standing on my feet, do I stand on your feet?" "No, I do," Grace replies.

Big sister Grace

On September 21, 2012 - Uncategorized

Grace was super excited to meet her little brother today and was loving touching, holding and hugging him. She is quite attached to him and got very upset when they took him off to be weighed, and then again later when I took him to see the paediatrician.

She was super bleak when it was time to leave for school after meeting him this morning and cried crocodile tears when I dropped her off, but she settled quickly once I had left and had some fun and ballet lessons.

All she wanted to do today was spend time with her brother.

She has has a couple of classic lines today. We can't remember all of them, but here are a few

While waiting for a photo Grace says, "Say cheese! Eli, say cheese."

Eli was making little moans so Grace says to him, "Don't cry Eli, don't need to worry."

The baby, the baby, the baby!

On September 20, 2012 - Uncategorized

It turns out that Donné is pretty good at giving birth 🙂

We knew things were on the go yesterday when she had her show, and by 5 o’clock this afternoon the contractions had started. Fortunately she did not go from no contractions to crazy wild contractions like last time. This time they gradually built up, which gave us a nice chance to sort out Grace, call Keren to come and look after Grace, tidy up the house, and get everything ready for school the next day.

Grace was SUPER excited that she might wake up to a new baby brother….and I know exactly what the first thing out of her mouth is going to be in the morning. I don’t think she wanted to go to sleep she was so excited.

When Keren arrived at 20h30 things had moved forward quickly and it was time to go to the hospital. We arrived just before nine and when the sister checked, Donné was 9cm dilated. Call the doc and in he came, and at 21h48 little Eli Drennan was born.

Brand new!

Donné was amazing and pushed like a trooper, and everything went perfectly. Mommy and baby are both 100% well 🙂

We did it! Well, actually, she did it!

Giving my boy some love

3.465kg – a nice healthy weight for a 37 week pregnancy

He was so super chill while being weighed. My last experience of weighing a new born was Grace screaming her lungs out as soon as she touched the scale. He just chilled through it all.

51cm long.

34cm head diameter

It is really amazing how perfectly things worked out. Keren didn’t have to drive in traffic or wake up in the middle of the night, we had lots of time to sort all of Grace’s things out, and I can be here in the morning to take Grace to the hospital to meet her baby brother.

Thank you Father God for blessing us with Eli, for a healthy mommy and baby and for the serendipity of how everything happened. Lord, you are truly good to us, thank you, amen.

I’m really excited to meet little Eli. It is such a different experience to the first time. We’re much more chilled and he is just a cute little baby rather than a scary bundle of squeaks and cries. It is wonderful to be full of excitement and wonder, rather than being overwhelmed by it all.

I’m also really excited to introduce him to Grace 🙂

Love you mama

On September 19, 2012 - Uncategorized

Donné was lying on the bed reading, feeling generally sensitive and Grace was being her usual boisterous bumping-pushing-not-at-all-worried-about-mama-being-sensitive self. So I said to her, "Grace, you need to be gentle with mommy, so just touch her gently and whenever you touch her say 'I love you'."

Grace gently puts her hand onto Donné, "I love you mama," (she has regressed to mama instead of mommy for the last few days). She then takes her hand off and touches Donné in another spot, "I love you mama." And then again, "I love you mama. I love you mama, I love you mama, I love you mama…" and on she went.

Our rainbow

On September 18, 2012 - Uncategorized

We were greeted by a stunning rainbow when leaving for school this morning….which is just always 100s of times more stunning in real life (cell phone camera and rain on the windscreen are not helping). Grace then kept asking where the pretty colours of the rainbow were on the way to school.

We went for another scan today and little boy is lying nicely in place, ready to take his ride down the rabbit hole and into the real world. Officially he still has a couple of weeks to go. We’re still hoping that he’ll join us next week before the Doc goes away to his conference….we have until 6 o’clock on Saturday the 29th. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

I’m excited to meet the little guy.

G-r-a-c-e

On September 17, 2012 - Uncategorized

G is Grace's letter, and every time she sees one she says, "g – that spells Grace," (to which Donné recently answered, "No, that spells Google," – one of the many G's in the world.)

And when she sees her name she runs through the letters, "g, rr, a, rr, eh." Not sure what's up with the c.

Little weekend things

On September 16, 2012 - Uncategorized

We were driving and counting the corners until we got home. “Corner number 3,” I said to Grace as we got to the last one, to which she replied, “Cornwell Street.” I said, “Yes, corner number three,” and she said, “Cornwell. Concentrate dad.”

We always pray together before Grace goes to sleep, and each night I ask Grace if there is anything she would like to say thank you for, to which she always replies no. After her good prayer to say thank you for our food I said to her, “Grace, praying is kind of like when we say thank you for our food.” She closes her eyes and says, “Thank you for this wonderful bed, amen.”

So far Grace has not been happy with me taking her too deep under the water. She is happy to be under, but hasn’t wanted to go and collect things from the bottom, even though she is happy to collect rings from the bottom in her swimming lessons. Today we went for a swim and took her diving toys with. She spoke about diving down to fetch them, but when I asked her if she wanted to she screamed. So we swam and had fun jumping in and grabbing the side. After a while she asked to dive down to fetch her toys, and so we did….and we did….and we did. We swam for about an hour and spent a large chunk of time just diving down to the bottom to fetch the toys and she was absolutely loving it.