Just to clarify after a couple of comments I received, when I mentioned in my last post it being the drugs making him sleep, I was referring to the cough/cold medicine he's been having, we're not giving him sleeping pills (yet!!! :-))

Spent the day with Uncy Paul at the zoo on Friday. We've had quite a week of animals - an animal theme at music on Tuesday, travelling petting zoo at playgroup on Wednesday, visiting the puppy Aunty Debs is looking after on Thursday and the zoo on Friday!


















































The zoo machinery was as big a hit as the animals!

We are still have disrupted sleeps, but feeling better now. I'm not sure if it's because we're not up for quite so many hours or because we've got used to it!!! At the moment Connor has a cold and cough, which makes him really congested at night as well as coughing a lot, so we can't really start toughening up as far as him going back to sleep on his own etc. Once he's over it we'll see where we are and try to hatch a plan! He does seem to be going back to sleep better than he was, but could be the drugs that are knocking him out...

On a more positive note, Byron has slept twelve hours straight for the past four nights, which is awesome! He's twelve weeks old today, so a bit of a legend as far as I'm concerned. It's been great not to have to worry about getting up in the night for him as well as Connor and I'm hoping it will last!

















I'm greeted by lots of smiles every morning when I go in to see Byron




















Bruce trying to catch a few zzzzz's on the ferry to waiheke on our way to Alex's 3rd birthday party.
















Pointing out all the boats

Oh my God we have for the first time joined the ranks of sleep deprived parents and it's nothing to do with Byron, who has one quick feed between 7:30pm and 7:30am and sleeps the rest of it. Connor, who his whole life until a week ago slept like an angel, has decided he doesn't want to sleep or doesn't want to be without us. He's been up for three or four hours every night for the last week and we're starting to feel rather tired ( to say the least!!!). Have tried many things from leaving him to going in every so often etc, but nothing seems to be working except stroking his head to sleep, which can take an hour so not exactly practical! Felt very bad as he's thrown up a couple of times from crying when we've left him for a while. No photos sorry as he's also not going down to bed in the evening, so don't really have time to do anything at the moment. Will hopefully put a more awake post on soon...

Fascinated by the baby gym now!

Our poor new plants have had a bit of a battering since they were put in nearly two weeks ago. They have suffered the worst torrential rain downpours that I can remember, then yesterday we had a real cold snap and the biggest hailstorm I've ever seen - it lasted about five minutes with huge stones and looked like it had snowed afterwards! Some of the plants leaves look like they've been through a shredder so I hope they recover!!!
















I've never seen hail like it, but ten minutes later the sun was out again - very bizarre!





















Our shoes under the covered veranda were filled with hailstones - the wind was so strong it piled them all up against the front door.

Most of the planting has been done now, with the all important grass to come! Then hopefully we can finally take the horrible black plastic off the paving stones and have them sealed. We seem to have created more work for ourselves as we painted the new fence white, but our garden designer had a fit and said it has to be 'karaka', a very dark green. After seeing an example of it we have been convinced so now have to repaint the fence - aarrgghhh!!!! We are now willing the plants to grow as fast as they can, as obviously they look fairly sparse at the moment, but should fill out quickly. Just popped out and took a couple of snaps.






















The line of olive trees in the back garden, with liriope and canna underplanted, which will be very colourful once they're established. There will be grass where the mud is and the black plastic is covering our lovely paving stones. The sterile white fence will be very dark.


















Front garden, which has had the planting finished. The plants along the fence are camelias, which will grow to form a solid hedge. There is a magnolia tree and the rest of the ground is covered with star jasmine, which will form a carpet of green with white fragrant flowers (grow plants, grow!!!).