First week with four

So one week has passed with our family of four. It's been a fairly quiet week with not a great deal of involvement with the outside world. I took a few days off to help Shar get back on her feet, but it seems as if it wasn't enough, as now she is getting a bit sick. It looks as if I'll be having a few days here and there in the coming weeks to help her out. She got in a bit of trouble today from the mid-wife who is telling her that she hasn't been resting and relaxing enough.

Last Friday, we got Liana's heel-prick test and then waited for the patient travel people at the hospital for Zemmy, who will be travelling to Brisbane in a few days for a check up on his heart. Not that we think that anything is wrong with his heart, it is just a precautionary measure due to other people with his syndrome having heart defects. From there, we popped into the courthouse and lodged Liana's birth paperwork, and then to Medicare to add her onto our card. Finally, to Souths Bowls Club to celebrate Shar's grandparent's anniversary.

So far, Liana is feeding quickly. She is struggling with her wind but only fusses, rarely cries out. She soothes to touch and will go very floppy after feeding. She could sleep for hours if held and commonly sleeps well up until midnight. But between 1 and 4 in the morning, she struggles to feed well and and is quite restless. Poor Shar is up a lot of that time.

I've received a lot of interest from parents at work. Heaps of congratulations and half-a-dozen gifts of georgeous pink dresses. (I have a great group of parents this year). Everyone is so excited that we 'finally' got our girl. The next comment is: "So, are you stopping now?" Wait and see...

Some Amazing True Stories

Tonight we had a games night at Sharlene's parent's house. Sharlene's aunt and boyfriend came over as well. During the course of the night, Sharlene's mum brought out a set of mugs with cats printed on the side. These were mugs that had been purchased at our local ADRA shop. Well, Shar's aunt recognised the mugs as her own that she had received from her deceased sister a few years ago (also Sharlene's dad's sister). Sharlene's dad had gotten them for the purpose of giving them to Sharlene's mum's sister, who loves cats.
What a wonderful way to reunite the siblings with a piece of family heritage.

Another awesome story is one from a couple of years ago. Shortly after Fiji had some large flooding. A call went out for donations of sheets, clothes and other items. Sharlene's mum reluctantly gave away a particular table cloth that was part of her glory box when she got married. Later, Sharlene's parents went to Fiji for a fly and build. At the village where they worked, there was a shelter where they had lunch. There, Sharlene's mum noticed the table cloth. After asking where it came from, one of the people serving them said that she bought it from the ADRA shop on the Fiji mainland. What a wonderful blessing of God to know where something so special ended up and to know it was in safe hands.

One last story. Sharlene's aunt (the same one as above) took another set of mugs to the ADRA shop. They were designed to look like a pig. Later, her mother went to the ADRA shop and bought one of the mugs and gave it to her daughter. So, in that way, Sharlene's aunt got her mug back through her own mum.

Just a few stories that I thought quite amazing.

Liana's First Bath

This morning we intended to give Liana her first bath. We debated aloud about whether the bathroom basin would be good enough to use as she was probably too small for the baby bath tub. Azariah overhead us talking and asked where the basin was. We replied that it was in the cabinet where the toothbrushes were kept. Azariah said that it would be too small and then walked out of the room. He came back a minute later with the top draw of the cabinet - the one with the toothbrushes and said, "See? It is too small."

Good old Riah.

When the time came though, she did fit well into the basin and all the boys took turns at splashing water onto her body. A great family event.

Meet Liana-Roze Meghan Cole

The last few days have been pretty busy, but not with work. No, that's not quite true. I have been diligent to maintain and monitor the circumstances at work. Actually, the busy-ness has come from the birth of our fourth baby, Liana-Roze who joined our family on Tuesday afternoon. It was Sharlene's birthday on Tuesday and now we have 2 girls in the family with the same birthday.

We chose 'Liana' mainly because of its meaning: 'God has answered'. In an indigenous dialect it also means: 'vine'. So another meaning is 'Rose vine' or 'climbing rose' as I like to think of it. Of course, the 'z' is in theme with the boyz' namez. We also discovered that Liana's name reversed roughly resembles, 'Roseanne Lee', which is Sharlene's sister's name.

The pains started that morning but didn't progress very fast. About midday, I took Shar to the hospital to see the midwife who kept us there for a little while, walking the hallways and climbing stairs sideways, 2 steps at a time. That didn't seem to do much, but after a short sleep, Sharlene woke up with everything starting to move along quickly.

Liana was born at 5:03pm, after two hours of serious labour. Her birth weight was 7.03lb or 3.320kg. Her length was 49cm and head circumference was 33cm. All these things combined to make her a much smaller package than our previous children. Sharlene is relishing the opportunity to have a child that 'looks' like a baby a little longer, and she is so very happy that she has a little girl.

Both Sharlene and the baby are going well and after the birth, we stayed in the hospital for about 5 hours before being discharged to go home. Shar's parents had collected the boys from school and kindy that day and Zemiel, Azariah and Zekiah were asleep when we stopped by to show off our newest addition.

The next morning we went over to Pop and Nuna's house early. We showed her to the boys and took video of their reactions. They loved her from the start and have been so gentle with her. With the exception of Zekiah who doesn't know his own strength, but is trying to be kind and share his toys.

Throughout the pregnancy, Sharlene's mantra has been that she would not be dressing the new bub in pink. However, of the past three days, 2 of them had Liana dressed in pink. Sharlene says that the colour was 'apricot' not pink, or "that's what we were given" but I know the truth is that she can't resist dressing her up like a little doll.

Liana surely does somehow get the hiccups frequently enough and has fed well and frequently since soon after birth.

She now has a phobia of flash photography.

Okay. Now the pictures:

This one is of Liana shortly after she was born.

 The midwife took this picture.

Liana's fingers were still blue when we took this photo of her gripping Sharlene's pinkie finger.

My turn, Liana holding onto her daddy.

 Okay. Now we have returned home. Sharlene likes this photo because Liana's outfit matches my red shirt. See, I told you there was one day without pink.

 At home and less than a day old.

The next few photos are of the boys holding Liana for the first time. Here, Zemiel gets his first hold and his words were, "She's so beautiful." Naw!

 Azariah could hardly wait for his turn and he loved every second of it when the time came.

 Zekiah has shown a lot of interest in the bub. None of the jealous behaviour as yet, but I am sure it will come.

 Day 2. Sharlene took Liana to visit Busa-nanna. Would've liked a pic of all four generations but obviously someone needed to hold the camera...

Day 3. Nanna Hope and Grandad Frank were having a lunch with their children to celebrate Frank's birthday and their anniversary. We arrived to give the extended family a look.

 Although, Zemiel and Azariah have been at school and kindy, Zekiah has been dragged around with us everywhere. But he doesn't look like he minded.

 And all this takes us to the end of the week. It will be another adventure tomorrow as we go to church for everyone to see. No doubt, many adventures yet to come, but as I'm back at work next week, perhaps not so many photos.

Till next time.

Bee Hives and a Baby Shower

Today was a very busy day. Sharlene's dad called up a couple of nights ago asking if I could help him with a bee hive extraction at a property near Pleystowe. The hive was located in a wine barrel with the bees accessing through the bung hole. We thought that perhaps we would be able to split the hive into two hives and so we brought two boxes with us.

When we first arrived we took a quick look at the hive before going back to the truck to get suited up, but on the way I spotted a swarm of bees on the move up the hill of the property. We tracked the bees until they settled on a tree in the next-door neighbours' yard. Full of excitement of claiming a swarm we grabbed one of the boxes and set it up under the tree. We also fetched a ladder and pruning saw from our host with the hopes of capturing it. We never used them. It was going to be difficult climbing the ladder, holding a hive box and shaking the swarm into the box without falling or half the bees zipping away before they landed in the box. That situation didn't appeal, so instead we said a prayer asking God that if he didn't have any other plans for the swarm, to please let us have it. We left the box there on the ground with the bees seeming to be interested in it and went back to work on the wine barrel hive.

The extraction of that hive was slow work but we got a good amount of brood and honey comb out of it. The bees of this hive were very placid. The brood we cut to the size of the frames and used rubber bands to hold them in line. We filled up about 7 frames this way. We even resorted to bending into the barrel to scrape out the bees to put into the hive box.

Before we left, we checked to see if the swarm had taken the bait and gone into our box. They hadn't. Oh well, we thought. Next time, we'll not wait. We grabbed that second box and transferred some of the brood into that hive, adding bees and closing the lid.

After cleaning up the area, we were all set to go home, we'd taken off our suits and the lady had given us a cold drink of water, when I spied a swarm of bees on one of the small mango trees on her property about 100 metres away. Fantastic! Could this possibly be the same swarm as before? We didn't know, but we were excited to see that we didn't need to use a ladder or pruning saw to get the swarm this time.  After suiting up a third time, we retrieved the hive that we originally tried to bait the hive with and took it over to the tree. Lid open, a quick shake, swiftly replace lid, watch and wait to see if the queen comes out. Success!

That was my first experience of catching a swarm, and using the brood from a hive to create a new one. We left the box with the brood back at the property, hoping that the bees would accept the new home. The swarm, we took back home. We put a queen excluder on the front of the box to keep her in and opened up the gate. New hive complete.

That was only the morning.

In the afternoon, our family went home for a short rest before heading off to the beach. Unbeknownst to Sharlene, a friend of ours had organised a surprise baby shower for her. So after a short rest/sleep I bundled the boys into the car and woke up Shar to come to the beach. When we got there, I said to her that I recognised our friend and that we should go over and say hello. There were pink balloons attached to the trees and several other guests there at this time. Sharlene wasn't sure about walking in on someone else's party, but after some persuasion I got her close enough for all the guests to shouts out, "surprise!" Sharlene was completely baffled and enjoyed the surprise.  It was a mix of friends, family and work colleagues that joined us. I took the boys down to the beach for a swim and then after we came back and had a bite to eat, we went to the park for the rest of the time. By the end though, we were exhausted and ended up get some hot chips for dinner. The boys didn't complain, they got to eat hot chips and watch Octonauts (which is their new favourite show).

Well, that's what happened today. With our new baby due this week, I'm sure there will be something else to write about later on.

Fishing, Fields of Fruit, and Facepainting

 During August, our family engaged ourselves with a variety of outings.  The fishing trip was a valuable exercise, not only for Sharlene (who caught some nice fish) but also for the boys who were pulling in small bream and perch the whole time. They caught their first, second and third fish that day! Zekai was the least impressed. He cried everytime he fell over in the mud but seemed to cheer up a little when he was able to throw some rocks. Wooden spoon to me, who didn't catch anything that day, except help the boys pull in their catches.

Mid-August came and I had planned a visit to Ballantyne's Strawberry Farm for the centre parents. Of course we all went and had a great time. One other centre family went but we had another unexpected benefit of going that day - Sharlene's cousin had randomly decided it was a good day for them to go strawberry picking as well. Our children got to meet their second cousins and eat a LOT of strawberries.

At the end of August, the new ‘Masters’ opened to the public. As a father's day treat, we decided to go and see what all the fuss was about. We wandered through for about two hours before we left, but not before we had scored some free fairy floss and the boys had their faces painted. 

Fun, fun, fun!

Zemiel and Lambsie

Zemiel's prep class has a stuffed lamb toy that is taken home by various children and families most weekends. Usually, it falls to the student to report back to the class what a wonderful time the soft toy had at their house. Sometimes, the mums and dads would also be given an assignment too. Shortly after Azariah's birthday, Shar and I had just such an assignment. Create a collage of photos and information on A3 size cardboard about Zemiel's early life - up until he started prep and the adventures of Lambsie at the Cole residence.
It took Shar and I two nights to complete but we were quite pleased with the end result. We took a photo of the result on Zemiel's ipad to put here.

Big Camp and Riah's Birthday

At the end of June, North Queensland has its big camp. So up to Townsville we go for a week of spiritual renewal. The highlight of the week were the meetings by Dr John Hammond, and the stories he told. We enjoyed those even more than the nightly meetings of the big tent. The other great thing was taking the time out to go for a walk along the river every morning. I usually took Zekai along with me in the pram and we'd go a couple of k's up and back down the river. One morning, I took a few pics of the river and the wildlife. One photo I like is of a cormorant and a turtle in a tree, both sun-baking.

So Riah has been obsessed with anything to do with superheroes, sticks, swords, and generally anything active or destructive. When the little fella decides to turn four, what would he like on his cake? "Swords and knives please." Then, as every good parent does, I lecture him on the evils of violence and the virtues of passivism - and then make him the cake he wants. Have a look:

Just to give it an appearance of chivalry we put a shield shape behind it.

22Q at the Zoo (May 19th)

Well hey! Shar and I have got ourselves back on the 'net and able to upload photos and such again. It just means I gotta get back in the habit of doing so. So...what's been happening this year? In this post, I'll put up a few photos of our trip to Brisbane, May 19th for the special event: 22Q at the Zoo. We went to the Daisy Hill Koala Sanctuary. It was a great day for the boys and we liked the opportunity to talk to some other families about their experiences.

In the evening we visited Sharlene's sister Rosie and her husband Piotr. It was great to see them and the good renovating work they had done to their house. Zem and Shar stayed behind for some appointments the next day, while I drove home with Riah and Zekai. We raced them home to Mackay, and were were supposed to pick them up from the airport just after 9pm. We drove into Mackay about 9:30 that night, but alas, Zemiel had come down sick that day and the flight home was postponed.