Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Grandma comes to visit, 9-21 April, 2011

This month started with Grandma arriving early in the morning. It was a day until I was due to go into labour, though we didn't know exactly when I would "pop". My mother arranged to come over for a week plus a bit as needed, to help provide some continuity to Sparrow and be an extra pair of hands and extra driver keeping her busy and with some semblance of normality regardless of what happened with me. And that worked out very well. As it happened, my labour officially started about 40 hours after Mum arrived, and then we were in hospital for several days post-caesarean. So the timing was excellent - Mum had just enough time to get a good picture of Sparrow's routine and get used to where stuff is etc before I vanished and James got very distracted and we both left her doing the regular meals-and-playgrounds-and-naps routine that Sparrow has. I didn't get a lot of photos of Grandma with Sparrow because I wasn't there for a large chunk of that time. But I got a few, and can tell a few little stories from her visit.

Grandma arrives, just at sunrise and about when one little girl is ready to wake up and join us for breakfast. But what's this? Grandma has brought a bag of something odd...

Cookie cutters. I expect to be doing a lot more with cooking and playdough and sandpits and suchlike in the next year, and so Mum has brought me the extended inheritance of random cookie cutters. Sparrow's quite fascinated, especially with the metal ones for some reason, and quite happily looked through them saying what they were if she knew the shapes ("rabbit", "moon", "bell", "flower" etc).

Just having a play and a talk. Mum slept on our new futon sofa in the loungeroom, which also served Sparrow as a playspace some of the time. She was playing "Where's Sparrow?" with that basket over her head.

A useful part of our routine on evenings where settling might be needed - watching an episode of the Muppets together. I think this one might have guest-starred Petula Clark. Of course, adopting this occasional tactic will involve Mum learning to operate the sixteen dozen remotes I swear James' hifi setup needs. Or handing the remote control to Sparrow and getting her to turn it on. Sparrow can't turn it on herself yet, but not for lack of trying.

Mum got a picture with all four of us. I think Sparrow was watching Little Pim (or maybe YouTube) with me while I fed Robin, and we got James to sit with us to get the four of us in one shot. That's a rarity, might be the first of such shots too.

Straight out of the bath and onto the chair, none of this drying business in between. She likes the swivel chair. It's normally in the desk room at my desk, but I had it out in the loungeroom as an extra seat at adult height for the weeks that we had visitors staying with us. The fabric on the back of the chair is from a pile of fabric odds and ends that Mum brought. Pink, with kittens. But it's a nice flannelette despite its colour and pattern. It inadvertently became a towel at this moment. Sparrow has this habit of running out of the bath and fighting any attempts to dry her. So usually I don't bother - just let her carry her own towel around and assume that she will eventually dry just through ambience and accident. Whatever she sprawls on will dry her. Such as these kittens. I did use some of the fabric in Sparrow's fabric book, I didn't have much in the way of pink so it filled a nice gap.

Mum got a photo of me with the two kids all having a cuddle and a hold, first thing one morning. I was sleeping on this couch in the book room so as to not disturb James and Sparrow too much with the several-times-a-night feeds and changes you have in those first few weeks. Turn it into a wider bed overnight with room for Robin's box next to me, and then back to couch form for us all to hang around on in the morning when it's sunny in here. Once I was back from hospital Mum started slowly giving me back bits of Sparrow's routine as I was able to absorb them, letting me start taking charge of family time again and having more time to go do other things herself. We had some nice mornings with Mum before she'd wander off for an adventure or two for the day, usually geocaching or occasionally shopping. This was Sunday, two days after we finally got to bring Robin home. She went to the monthly craft fair in Williamstown then met us at Newport Lakes for the fruit-and-veg swap, and she was going to head off to the Queen Victoria Markets in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, she came down with gastro just after she got to the Vic Markets, whether it was something she'd picked up in the morning or picked up at our place with the sudden introduction of a new pooping machine and the concomitant new-and-imperfect hygiene routines. So she had a miserable afternoon, spent several hours in the loos at Flinders St Train Station without being able to leave (and that's not the nicest place to have ended up). I eventually managed to get hold of her to work out why she hadn't come home, and we organised with the train station staff to come and pick her up when she felt able and ready to leave - she hadn't wanted to bring the gastro home with a newborn in the house. Which is understandable. We managed to keep anyone else from getting it though, and Mum had a couple of days mostly sleeping and recovering. So here it's Tuesday night, two days later and she's recovered enough to be interested in eating at least a little bit, and we've come down to Taco Bill at the end of the street which is a place we all really enjoy eating at. It was a pleasant dinner, food was great as always.

Unfortunately, it was probably the food (or something else Sparrow ate given how many random things she sticks in her mouth), but here we are three hours later with Sparrow down with gastro. Poor mite was really upset about going to bed, very distressed, and woke up throwing up ten minutes after going to sleep. So that was a pretty obvious reason for the distress. Sparrow *hated* throwing up, this was not a life experience that impressed her at all, and I can't say I blame her. She was very upset that it kept happening. So James is holding her in the bathtub while she sleeps between vomits, and while I run around and do some of the cleaning up. James had done the first and worst lot of it while I held her, because Mummy is the cure for most distress, but he tagged with me part way through so that he could hold her and give me the rest of the gross stuff. Which I was OK with.
So then we had a couple of days of family gastro. I'd shared cutlery with Sparrow, and James and I had both been thrown up on so we both got it. Sparrow went down at 9 pm, it threatened for a while but really hit me at midnight. James manfully resisted until about 3 am, knowing that Sparrow would be over the worst of it by then. Mum started feeling a little off but (possibly because she'd just had a separate round of gastro) didn't really get hit by it. So we were quite thankful that she was able to (at a steady pace) just keep washing towels and sheets and putting laundry through so that everything slowly got cleaned up, and make a run out to the chemist for some stuff that would help, and so on. It made it so much easier having one person who was still at least vaguely functional. Especially as I was trying to stay as isolated from James and Sparrow as I could, to reduce any likelihood of Robin getting it. In the end he was the only one of us who had no symptoms (thank goodness).
Mum's flight out was just as we were all recovering, so she took a taxi to the airport (we weren't up to driving yet). Sparrow and I walked out with her to the corner of the shops where the taxi was coming to, and said goodbye. Later that day Sparrow and I walked out to the shops and when we got to that corner Sparrow started looking around and calling "Grandma?". She remembers stuff like that well now.