Christmas Day

Well finally got around to getting a few spare minutes and throwing up some photos from Christmas day - Seb's First Christmas.

Christmas Day - Presents & Lunch

Also here are a few videos of late

Seb Ready For Christmas Lunch:


Seb at the Park on Boxing Day:


Seb Waking Up Post Christmas:

Happy Christmas Eve

Hopefully everyone is having a fantastic Christmas eve and are getting ready for an even better Christmas day with family and or friends.

We had a pretty quite Christmas eve enjoying some lovely Tasmanian Salmon that a customer through work flew in for us.


Usually I'm not a huge salmon fan (mainly scarred by bad packet salmon from the supermarket) but this was sensational, so very rich.


Of course prior we enjoyed a lovely selection of cheeses and wine and of course the mandatory watching of the carols on the tv.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and I'll be sure to update our Christmas day going on's at some point hopefully even with some SebTV.


Here's a pic of Seb keeping cool the other day :)

Turning 29....

What an eventful year!

My 29th Birthday was a nice relaxing day home with the family. Deb, Sebastian and the boys (dogs) Amare & Farley.

Kicked back and enjoy the NBA double header - although my boys the Phoenix Suns lost by three points :( also enjoyed a lovely home made brunch of bacon and eggs.

We took Seb for his first cruise in his Hummer - oh wait up it's a Jeep - close enough. So off to the park with Seb in his Jeep pram (took a few folded towels under neath him so he'd fit - he so little :)

   



Amare and Farley loved playing fetch whilst Deb, Seb and myself relaxed under the shade of a tree.

Deb made the best tasting brownies EVER for my birthday cake and whilst there are plenty left I'm sure they won't last long.

   

Thanks to all for the lovely birthday wishes via email, sms, card etc and of course thankyou all for the fantastic gifts.

Keep well.

SebTV - Read On...

Welcome to SebTV! Well not quite but with the way the net is going these days.....

Below are some clips from the last few days that I have uploaded to YouTube.

Before we get onto the YouTube clips, this first one is from a relatively new site called UStream which gives users the ability to record (stream) live from their phone onto the net, that's right LIVE! I can sit here recording the goings on of life and you can all kick back anywhere in the world and tune in. Ok the quality isnt amazing, but considering what it is achieving I'm pretty impressed. Oh and of course the recorded streams/clips are archived for viewing at anytime.

So here is my first UStream attempt recorded earlier today.



Hopefully there will be plenty more UStream to come. Be sure to bookmark my UStream page for archived and LIVE streams/clips.
UStream - anewman13 - SebTV
Of course all of these usefull links can be found under the links on the right and via the icons at the very bottom of the blog.


Now onto the YouTube Clips - YouTube offers a better quality but obviously isn't live and requires a bit of time and editing to upload, whilst the 'good moments' will still be uploaded to YouTube more and more on the fly recording will be done through UStream purely for the ease and speed in which the clips can be up online for all to see Live or archived.

So keep the YouTube page bookmarked as well http://www.youtube.com/anewman13/

Of course all of these usefull links can be found under the links on the right and via the icons at the very bottom of the blog.



Day 8 - Bottle Feeding



Day 14 - Hiccups



Day 14 - Mr Happy, Mr Stretchy



Day 17 - Hometime



Day 18 - Settling in at home

Pantry World

What to do whilst waiting for little Sebastian to come home, why build a pantry of course.
Ok truth be known the pantry building was planned before Sebastian's arrival with the folks coming over for my birthday, a early Christmas and for me to utilise dads tools and skills in building a fully fledged pantry to replace our shelving unit. A unit which was custom built some seven years ago for a totally different house and space, it has served us well and will continue to do so - but now as storage shelving.


Thanks to dad for lugging his tools all the way over and his hard work on the wall/door frame and getting me started on the shelves.
Thanks to Ann for being my slave girl in holding shelves and for all her crazy sanding and first coat of paint on the walls.


I'm extremely happy with how it turned out, now that it's all painted (two coats) it looks awesome. Of course it isn't totally complete with a door handle to go on and door to be painted at some point, but it is definetly usable.




Now for the fun part of re-stocking it, working out what to put where (the fun part).

Oh and of course the iminent trip to bargain bulk shopping at Costco :)

Sebastian Arrives - Looking Back To The Day...

Wow what a week, from heading into the hospital on Monday morning with a few complications too actually having our gorgeous little guy be with us I think was both not quite what we were expecting. Although ironically I did mention in the car trip in that I was ready for him to arrive.

It was a whirlwind morning in the hospital arriving around 9am, we had gotten pretty use to the routine due to previous visits of hooking up to monitoring in the labour ward (or birth centre as some of them liked to call it, apparently that sounds nicer). From there a few checks periodically by the doctor and some care from the midwives.



Our first encounter with a doctor that day was a pretty confident there is no chance this baby is being delivered today, within an hour a second doctor (higher up the chain) presented us with a different outlook, more of a this could be happening within the next few days we should go through the process with you of a C-Sect and the various pros and cons associated with these types of deliveries.

Not long after that a third doctor (even higher up the chain) popped in for a check and before you know it we were gowning up, Deb was getting drugged out and we were whisked away for Operation Little Guy.

I can't imagine what was running through Deb's head at this stage but for me I don't think at the time it was really sinking in, thrown a top and bottom nurse ensemble (they didn't have gowns tall enough for me within arms reach), and than followed as the number of people around Deb seemed to continually grow as the minutes ticked. Than I was directed to a waiting room whilst they prepped Deb for the Op.
This was the weird part sitting in a waiting room (that was for people waiting for translators to help them through their various appointments ie street clothed people and I'm siting their looking all nurse like), with a phone that's battery was almost dead and nothing else. Time took forever yet looking back it all happened so quickly.
The actually Op was extremely quick and before you know it we were happy proud parents of 6 week early Sebastian Edward Newman at 12:57pm on Monday 30th November 2009. I got the pleasure of cutting the chord and than two nurses, myself and Sebastian headed down to the intensive care nursery whilst Deb was getting put back together so to speak.



It was tough spending those first couple of hours alongside Seb whilst Deb was in recovery, not getting to share with her the experiences of weighing and measuring and just enjoying this new life in front of me. It was a teary moment but us men don't cry of course ;)



As soon as things started too seem like they where calming down Deb's family had arrived and Deb wasn't far from coming out of recovery. Knowing the hospital like the back of my hand (we had been here ALOT recently) it didn't take long to track down Deb's family given directions of we are in a waiting room on level 4 hehe. And than tracking down Deb was equally as easy ;)

I think everyone was a bit taken aback at their first visit down to see Seb in the intensive car nursery and him in his little hot box and the unexpected earliness of his arrival.



Onto the present and Seb is now six days old and going along great, as with all premature babies there are plenty of challenges that can and do arise along the way and whilst plenty of them are heart stoppers for all around him he is in the best care we can hope for. Seb has been in his hot box for a couple of days, had several drips in and out for various things and had a one man blue light disco (Jaundice) for a day.



The little guy is soldiering on like a tropper and getting stronger and stronger each day.

Mum is doing fantastic, she came home on Thursday and is expressing and breast feeding and whilst I can't even imagine how tough it easy I can see how much of a AWESOME job she is doing and how much Seb loves feeding times!

One crazy week, I'm sure there will be plenty more to come but it was good to get too the weekend and enjoy some sleep and a bit of relaxing time and some time just chilling with Deb and Seb, even if he does have to stay in the hospital for a little while longer.

Hopefully all going well he will be home within the next 10 days or so, whilst we miss him dearly and would love for him to be chilling in his cool Seb room we must also be patient and wait till the time is right. The Royal Womens have been fantastic thus far and all the staff are awesome, especially the Intensive Care Nursery staff are unbelievable in what must be an extremely tough job.

Thanks to all for the lovely wishes and support and we will continue to update (and probably bore) you all with pictures and videos and blogs when we can find some time.



Here's a reminder to the links (you can also get to any of these using the icons at the very bottom of the blog)

Blog: http://anewman13.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/anewman_13/
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/anewman13/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/anewman13/