Happy 5 month day

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Originally uploaded by malclocke

A quick wee status report on our dear daughter. She is still doing great, and seems to be a dab hand at attracting attention whilst out and about, exhibiting a wealth of cute smiles reserved solely for complete strangers.

Her alertness has been noted by the Plunket nurse, and she also seems to have a thirst for literature, seemingly wanting to digest book after book. Unfortunately, she wants to digest books in the literal sense, and the thirst for knowledge manifests itself as a puddle of drool all over the cover of 'All aboard with Maisy'.

Major breakthroughs of late noted by her oh-so-easily-impressed parents include blowing raspberries, rolling over, grabbing absolutely everything within reach and a frantic, breakdance like cacophony of limb motion that would be called crawling were it not for the complete lack of any forward progress.

A quick thank you needs to be added to Chris, Jo and Dylan for coming to visit us and showing great patience creeping around the house while Olive was asleep. Of course, we could never provide hospitality comparable to that on offer in West Bergholt, where even Fererro Rocher seem mundane, but hope you enjoyed your stay!

Keep an eye on flickr for more pics. Adios for now.

Bam ... and the dirt is gone!

I'm sure many of you in the UK have questions about living in NZ, what are the cultural differences, the good points, the bad points. But probably top of the list is 'can you get Cillit Bang?'

Well loyal readers, I'm afraid the answer is no! But into the fold comes a new contender, the only slightly less inconceivably named 'Easy Off Bam'. There are many similarities between the two, the garish packaging, exceptional ability at cleaning coins, etc. But the real difference lies, not in the product, but in it's champion. For where Cillit Bang has Barry Scott, on the other side of the world we are blessed with his evil twin, Martin Grelis. Sadly, the internet seems completely devoid of pictures of Martin fulfilling his role as Bambassador, so those of you on the top part of the world map will have to use your imagination.

The obvious question that arises from all this is who's better? The answer is, of course, Martin for two reasons:

1. Martin could beat Barry in a fight


2. Martin is a real actor, he was even in The Matrix. Barry is just made up, although he does have an interesting life story
   

Kids and Kites

Forgive me father, it has been 3 months since my last confusion. Thought we'd better write a little blog entry to celebrate Olives '3-month-day'. This episode is a video special, enjoy!

First up is a little clip so you can hopefully see Olives progress. She seems to change every day, and is really getting very interactive with giggles and smiles. The past few days she seems to have worked out that her arms and hands are actually under her own control, and are not just occasionally seen low flying objects passing by. Mum and Olive are both doing well, although they both seem to have a little trouble sleeping at times. Dad has no such trouble. It's also exciting as she is starting to fit into most of the lovely clothes that you folks all sent over for us, huge thank yous all round! Here are a few recent photos for your perusal.

In addition to Olive, the family in NZ has increased in size a lot since our last blog, with the arrival of Katherine, Roy, Ash, India, Sarah, Matt, Joe and Ben. Nana has moved into a lovely little pad just up the road, complete with hot tub. The Jacobs have moved to their country manor in Tuahiwi just outside the city, complete with a compact little 2 acre garden, and the Simmersons will move into 'North Beach Palace' any day now. It has been great having the family around, and the kids seem to be loving the beach lifestyle, taking to the water like ducks to ... well, you know. We also hosted our first ever family christmas day, now we finally have (nearly) enough room to do so.

Today we went down to the beach for the 'Tip Top Kite Day', which me missed last year, and it was a fantastic day. We took two kites, one flashy stunt kite and a homemade masterpiece constructed from some old tent fabric, bamboo and sellotape. The stunt kite proved a little difficult to fly due to the 5000 other kite strings dangling around. However, against all the odds the homemade jobby actually flew, and proved stable enough to be tied to Olives push chair and left to its own devices ... that is until Nana rescued it when it 'started flying funny' by crashing it head first into the ground. All the rellies turned up with kites of different shapes and sizes, and there were some true monsters on show, including a 50ft long octopus. Check out some more pictures.

Well, thats all for now folks. Will try and keep more up to date over the coming months as Olive progresses towards doing things a bit more impressive than basic bodily functions. Thank you all once again for your lovely cards and presents. Arohanui, Malc, Annie and Olive.

Now the dust has settled a little, here's a more detailed write up on our birth experience as promised. As a first birth we were expecting a long labour. We got a little more than we bargained for.

We knew things were starting to happen on Monday when Annie started to feel painful contractions. A restless monday night and more of the same on tuesday, pretty much no sleep for Annie as contractions were waking her up every 10 minutes. Wednesday Malc decided to work from home in the morning, anticipating things would get going in the afternoon. Nada. Another night of no sleep followed, but finally around 3am thursday morning the contractions started to get closer together. 5.30am we decided to call our midwife Amber as instructed as contractions are 5 mins apart. We expected to
wake her but she was already attending another home birth as backup. "I'll be there in 20 minutes!".

Amber turned up and set up all her kit, most of the gear that you would find in a hospital birthing unit lives in the back of her car. We already had the pool pumped up and ready, so it was all system go. We awaited the classic signs of progress, contractions lengthening and getting closer, and then ... nothing. At lunchtime, Amber told us she was going home for lunch (she lives in the next street) and would return in a couple of hours if she didn't hear from us earlier.

On her return, things were still the same. Another few hours and Amber headed home again for tea.

At that point, Annie inexplicably went to sleep for half an hour. On waking up, she moved into a pattern 1 minute contractions with five minutes sleep in between. Annie was exhausted after 3 nights without sleep. At around 11pm we called Amber to ask her to come and check out that baby was still ok. She came round and discussed her options. We decided she should do an examination to check progress before making any decisions, as we had no idea whether we were 10% or 90% of the way there.

Great news, we were 80% there. That seemed to give Annie the extra boost of energy required. We hurriedly filled the pool, and Annie clambered in as the contractions were getting pretty intense now, Annie was pushing hard. Still the contractions were 5 minutes apart, Amber said "we'll throw that textbook out the window". Although we hadn't planned to have a water birth, once Annie was in the water there was no getting her out. The contractions stayed 5 minutes apart, and Annie was convinced she was getting nowhere, but Amber informed her she could see baby's hair! A few more massive pushes, then "Malc, you need to come and catch your baby!". And on the last push, out she came. Malc brought her up to the surface and after a couple of splutters she started crying. She was passed to mum, and the two of them wrapped up in front of the fire. It was the most awesome experience of our lives, and we will never forget it.

We are also so grateful we chose to birth at home. If we had chosen a hospital birth, there is no way we would have continued without intervention for that long as the labour was not progressing in the textbook manner. In the end, that was the way it was supposed to be, and baby was born without complications.

We are now blissfully enjoying our first days as a family, Mum, Dad and Baby are all fine and healthy, even getting a semi-normal sleep pattern! Thanks to everyone for your wonderful messages, it really help to ease being so far away from everyone.

For the non-facebook users out there, here's some photos:

Take care all,

M, A & O

Introducing ...

The latest edition to the Locke family, Olive Alice Locke, born 3.33am 2 Nov 2007 NZ time at 7lb 13.

After a marathon 28 hour labour, she was born safe and well at home (as planned) in water. Dad managed to not faint and catch her bringing her to meet mum.

As you can imagine, the whole experience has been pretty shattering, but we are all resting now in absolute bliss. More photos and a more detailed write up to follow soon, but right now we need some sleep!

Malc, Annie and Olive.

And the winner is ...

After a late entry from the 'Nissan Homy', we decided to abandon the whole 'worst named car' train of thought and buy something decent. We are now the pround owners of 'Zak', a 3 litre turbo diesel Toyota Landcruiser.

We drove him home from Queenstown at the weekend, with an overnight stop in Wanaka where we caught up with Ad and Vic again. He's a pretty chunky beast, and with 8 seats he should be good for some family back-country picnic trips.

Hey Bumpy

A few people have asked to see some photos of Annie's .... ahem .... 'progress', so here ya go.

4th July 2007 at Lake Tekapo, theres definitely something there.

22nd August, where did that come from!

We can make sandwiches

Somehow at work, a discussion got started about the old phrase 'dig a hole to China'. Seems that the phrase is used here as well as the UK. We got round to talking about where you would end up if you kept digging a hole. Turns out, from the UK, you end up in the sea off the SE coast of NZ, near the Antipodes Islands. From here, you end up near Lourenza in N Spain. In a similar vein, someone set a challenge to make an 'earth sandwich' by putting two pieces of bread on the ground on two exactly antipodal points of the earth at the same time. They created groovy tool to help. Amazingly, someone did it!

It looks like unfortunately we will be parting ways with the mighty 'Big Al', due to irreconcilable artistic and mechanical differences. It's been emotional, but it's time to move on. Due to the mind boggling plethora of options available in todays automotive market, we have decided to go for the theme 'the worst named car in the world' in our search for new wheels.

So far, we've narrowed it down to two contenders:

The Toyota Emina

It's important if purchasing this car to ensure you find an example with the name proudly emblazoned in large letters down the side like the one pictured. This car is perfect for the dyslexic driver, or a fan of spoonerisms. There's an almost limitless supply of jokes about being rear ended available to the lucky owner of one of these beauties.


The Mazda Bongo Friendee

It's probable that a team of marketing guys & girls sat through months of brainstorming sessions, finally whittling the options down to this incomprehensible choice. Obviously, at no point during the process was anyone struck with the revelation that this is one of the worst names ever conceived for a car.

Got any more suggestions? Answers on a postcard please.

Shortest Day

Yesterday saw the shortest day pass. Unfortunately, the saying goes 'the days get longer, the cold gets stronger'. The southern half of 'the mainland' has been hit pretty heavily by a polar blast, and our minds are consumed pretty much completely by thoughts of insulation and heat pumps.

The shortest day also saw us standing in the pouring rain watching the grand opening of the new lights on the New Brighton pier. These actually turned out to be pretty impressive, the lights sort of pulse different colours along the columns, hard to explain but quite impressive.

On the home front, the nesting hormone (ikeadrene) appears to be taking over Annie's life. Evidence of this includes

• Coming home each day to discover a new curtain has appeared over a window, portal or cubbyhole
• Your house is now home to around a forests worth of paint swatch prints, and you are expected to have a strong opinion on the merits of the colour 'oatmeal' over 'Autumn Husk'. Failure to do so will see you regarded as the emotionless caveman that you obviously are.
• Your spouse proudly announces 'today, I hoovered the hoover'

Mum and baby are both well, with the latter doing regular impressions of 'Alien'.

Got another visitor on the way this Sunday, Tim is staying for a couple of nights en route to a season doing ski tuition in Wanaka .. lucky bugger! Also congrats to the Simmersons and Jacobs on getting NZ residency .. awooga!

Stay warm, and hello to all the Glastonbury goers, have a nice swim!

Malc & Annie

Home from home

We've arrived home safe and sound from Blighty. Think it will take at least a year to convince us to fly again, the world may be getting smaller but it's still pretty big when you have to fly half way round it.

Hopefully everyone has now heard our biggest news, if not your about to! At the end of October we will be parents. We had our second scan today, and all looks good. They gave us a pretty good idea of the sex, but we won't blog it for those of you who don't want to know! Annie is starting to look bigger now and getting a regular kicking, obviously stretching those surfing legs.

A huge thanks to everybody who made an effort to see us while we were back, and apologies to everyone we didn't manage to catch up with. It was lovely to see you all and catch up on the gossip. Special thanks go out to:

• Nigel and Carole for letting us mess up their house and putting up with the 'old codger' jokes.
• Dax, Mary and Isaac for helping us survive in the woods.
• Carol H for letting us mess up her house and putting up with the 'old Nana' jokes.
• Oli, Linda and Imogen for inviting 'The Family' to converge on their house (brave souls), and to all the Bells for coming.
• Fern, Will, Harry & Boz for the exceptional company, hospitality and risotto.
• Chris, Jo and Dylan for pizza & 'Spaced'.
• The Jacobs and Simmersons for rainy parties & bbq's.
• The Mill Hotel Bar for becoming our second home.
• Brett and Rachael for tea, biscuits and 'fat pants'!

And all the rest of you!

We are settling into the depths of winter, trying to turn into tough Kiwis. It's running up to the ski season, so all eyes are on the mountains and regular snow dances are being performed. Annie will unfortunately be grounded this season but will be compiling reports of the best on-mountain cafes.

More news soon, take care all,

Malc & Annie