'tis the season to be jolly...

Nico is 2 years, 1 month and 25 days today.

We took him to Franklin Rd last night. This is a road in the Ponsonby neighbourhood, where all residents who live there have to sign an agreement that they will put up lights and decorations close to Christmas. As a result, the whole road except one (no one lives there) was lit up at night and had a lot of passers by - mainly families with kids. Nico enjoyed it, it was a lot of sensory overload and he fell asleep in the car on the way home.

For his 2nd birthday, Camilla gave him a gingerbread Christmas decoration kit, which consists of three gingerbread pieces, icing and decorations to sprinkle on top. Miraculously enough I managed to convince Nico not to eat any of the gingerbread pieces before we had time to decorate it. And the very second I put down the gingerbread to do the finishing touches, one had disappeared into his mouth. Other presents were:

A train set sent by Marama

A little DHL plane from Irene

A dump truck from Finn (sponsored by Finn's Mummy and Daddy)

Christmas dinner at Oma Yoke tonight, so we'll put Nico to bed late for his nap this afternoon so he can stay up a little bit longer to open up his presents.

So far he's loving having both parents at home - especially Papa.

38 days to go till Bean shows up.

I have to figure out a way to delay labour. Bean being in the 5th centile (i.e. small), I have to make sure that she packs on as much fat as possible while inside me. For the last 3 weeks and until birth, Bean will be gaining a third to half of her birth weight. This means that the longer she stays indoors, the heavier she will be at birth. This probably explains why Nico was so light (2.265kg) at birth, having been born 3 weeks early. Soooo, no exercise, walking, sex, hot baths, chillies until 31 January - and if we're lucky, she'll be a week overdue.

Yes!!!

Today I'm 47 days away from a lighter me - Nico is 2 years, 1 month and 16 days.

The placenta's moved out of the way! This means no caesarean, at least not for placenta praevia and not for a breech baby anyway.

The 32 week scan confirmed that the placenta is left lateral and that Bean is now upside down. Just like a bat.

The only concern is that Bean is on the small side, so Toni our midwife may decide to send us back for another scan.

We had a look and listen at the blood flows, heartbeats etc and everything else appears normal.

She seems to be running out of room in there, so either I need a bigger belly or it's time to get rid of my tenant real soon before she breaks something.

Had my blood results back from Labtests end of November - looks like I've got anaemia, which would explain why I've been feeling so tired in the past few months. Just never thought I'd need to eat more meat. At least it's an easy one to fix.

We went to Catherine's birthday party over the week-end, it was great to see Nico comfortable with leaving some distance between us. As long as he's got food for company.

Also got a Christmas tree, which I decorated last night. It took Nico less than 2 hours to pluck out all the stars and most of the balls within his reach. He now has them neatly lined up on the coffee table.

Toilet training breakthrough!

At 2 years, 1 month and 4 days old, Nicolas has for the first time indicated that he needed to go to the toilet.

He started going to the toilet at around 7 or 8 months old, able to control some of his bodily functions enough to respond to prompts whenever being held over the toilet.

Then a few months back we put a toilet training seat on the toilet, along with a little step stool, and led him there at each nappy change and before and after sleeps/naps.

BLISS! For a whole week last week, I did not have to deal with a single dirty nappy, just wet ones. Then Friday at daycare, day-long outing with Daddy to Goat Island Reserve on Saturday, a whole afternoon spent at the kids' Christmas party organised by my work on Sunday, stayover at Oma's on Monday and I was back to square one and wondering how I was going to get it going again... Till the magic word came out of Nico's mouth: Caca?

Yep. As Bas says, the joy of parenting. Never thought that I'd be so excited about poos.

We attended the Mangere Bridge Santa Parade earlier today and were in the double-decker bus. Couldn't get Nico to wave. Felt like Bean was waving from inside the whole time.