The Baynhams

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Sian has chosen Music as an elective subject as she moves into Year 9. Part of the course requirements are that you play an instrument. 99% of the kids will have been playing one for many years. Even though Sian is musical she has never joined the school band or the choir and so she has a lot of catching up to do. We enquired with friends and found a local piano teacher who we hear is very good. No pop songs here, just real old fashioned music lessons.

Surprisingly Sian is loving it. She can play lots of songs off the radio through experimenting on our home piano but is happy to be brought back to basics at her once a week lessons. We are hoping that she continues to enjoy it because she has committed to studying it over the next two years. Maybe we will have the next big star on our hands. I hope she remembers to pay back her Mum and dad who spent a small mortgage raising her!

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The Melbourne cup is known as the "Race that stops a nation" All around Australia life comes to a standstill for 3 minutes as the most exciting horse race of the year runs. Some years I have attended and hosted Melbourne Cup lunches with friends, some years I have worked. This year I wasn't working and no lunch plans happened so I raced to school and brought the kids home just in time to turn on the tv at 2.59. We poured cordial and threw together the last of the Halloween sweets, chopped some fruit and had a party!

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On a day where I was feeling decidedly down in the dumps I got an unexpected phone call.

Visitors were passing through our area.

Could they stop in and let off steam before they continued on their long car journey?

Hell Yes!!!

Two little boys running up the driveway with grins on their faces and arms open wide for a hug. Only Mad Aunty Gina at  home to enjoy cuddles, giggles, tickles and fun.

One clever boy making paper aeroplanes...

One cheeky brother stealing them and running away...

and then getting side tracked by a pair of fancy shoes!

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I had fun with the camera this weekend. Particularly the 10 second delay that allowed me to set up a shot then run over to pose so I could be in it too!

Here are a few favourites...

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This weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to a friends family holiday home. It was a small one bedroom house her Grandfather had built many years ago. Compact and perfect for him to stay over on his fishing weekends. There was a garage that has recently been renovated into a long room with bunk beds so it sleeps 6! This is where we stayed. Sleeping bags and pillows and a backpack each. It felt like being back in school and going away on camp! Before we left on Friday Monica's daughter gave us a nickname "The laugh-a-lot gang" How true that was going to be!

We drove up in two cars on Friday evening and threw together a tea of all the bits and pieces we had brought, cheese crackers, fruit, chocolate. It was heaven. We queued for the bathroom to do teeth and then giggled and acted like a bunch of ten year olds as we settled to sleep. Seeing your friends at 7am in sleeping bags, make up free and "just woke up hair" is a great leveller. No pretence. What you see is what you get and this bunch of girls is as real as they come. Over the weekend we laughed, we shared stories, some that made us wet ourselves with laughter, some that made us hug our arms tight around our knees and brought a lump to our throats. We have all lived very different lives and hearing each others stories made us look at each other with new respect.

I love my family and I love my house but 48 hours away from them didn't kill them and it renewed me. It was a simple weekend. It cost less than $100 including petrol money and thank you flowers for Granny. The only alcohol was a glass of Baileys on the Saturday night as we munched on M+M's and maltesers. No hangovers, long walks and laugh after laugh after laugh.

Here's an example: We were sitting at the table discussing something when Monica piped up "I know this is a bit off the topic but...." "Have you noticed that we all have different hair?" It took us about ten minutes to stop laughing and we were wiping tears from our eyes as she tried to expand. Her point was that we don't all look the same. We haven't all tried to follow the latest trend sporting the latest hair colour or cut. We are all just individuals and happy to be that way.

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Rhiannon starts High School next year and this week has been a flurry of preparation. She has had visits from the High School co-ordinator to their class and then a long intro evening at the High School itself so we could be measured for uniforms, buy books and sit in on a talk preparing us all for the changes to come. It is scary times. Although Sian has been in the High School for two years and has settles really well each child is an individual and somehow Rhiannon just seems younger and less street wise and we are probably more nervous of her transition than we were with her big sister. Because she is a Millennium baby she was born in a boom year the school are taking in their highest number of students ever for the 2012 intake. Its going to be a learning curve for everyone, school and home alike!

The biggest day of the week was when she had to sit her actual entrance exams. These will help to place her in a class appropriate to her level. She was very nervous going in to sit these exams and the new school hall looked very formal as it was used for the first time for such a purpose. Rows and rows of tables and chairs and a nervous looking group of kids walking in in single file.

I was lucky to be helping out in Gareth's class that day and I got to see her come out for a break between papers. She was treated to a muffin from the canteen and was much chirpier returning in to the hall for round two.

The best thing about this move to High School is the great group of girls that she will be moving with. Although the friendships are bound to change as they mix in a huge group of 190 students I hope that they will still stay friends.

These days are going by way to fast. Slow down, slow down...

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Our kids school has had their first ever Grandparents Day this week. They started with a lovely Liturgy in the church in the school grounds...

...and then we moved to the new big hall to watch a concert by each class year.

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Ok, so I know that you don't want to know the boring bits of what we have been up to recently. You just want to know the story about the baby don't you?!

There are three stories. The Birth Mothers. The Birth Fathers. Mine.

The Birth Mothers is probably the most calm and accurate. The birth Fathers and mine are probably the most exaggerated and similar in that we both tell the story as though we were the hero delivering the baby single handedly!

It all began one weekend outside church. My friend was heavily pregnant and booked in for induction on the Monday. She was already feeling lots of cramps and contractions and I told her that because I only live down the road I was happy to help out if she needed someone to watch her other two daughters if anything happened late at night etc...

Nothing happened that night or the next and I text her good luck on the morning of the induction. It turned out that she got sent home from the hospital because the baby wasn't ready and was told to return 24-48 hours later. It was all a bit flat and disappointing. That night I turned the water on in the shower and while waiting for it to run hot I sent her a text  "Thinking of you, hope you are having a relaxing night, not long now..."

She didn't see that text because she was at home having quite advanced contractions waiting for her parents to come and mind her girls so she could head to hospital. I was under the hot water when Byron came into the bathroom and handed the phone into the shower. It was birth Father saying things were advancing quickly, her parents were only half an hour away but they needed me to watch the girls so they could leave for the hospital right away.

I hopped around the bathroom naked, trying to dry and put on the nearest clothes quickly, they were my pj's and dressing gown but I didn't think anyone would care so late in the evening. Byron tried slowing me and telling me not to fuss, there was no rush, no point in crashing on the way etc... I ignored him and jumped in the car with hair still dripping and drove the couple of minutes to her house.

Getting out of the car I felt a bit nervous. I'd only once seen this friends house, in daylight, while collecting her husband for a rugby match. I wasn't completely sure which house it was in the dark so I nervously knocked at a door of a vaguely familiar house with only one faint upstairs light on. When I heard the cries of a woman in labour float down to me I knew I was at the right house. I heard a shout telling me to come in but the door was locked. Between contractions the husband raced down the stairs, threw open the door and raced back up.

I followed and found my friend on her bed in full on labour. An ambulance had been called and the paramedics were talking them through until it arrived. I found myself going from "polite early stages of friendship" to "friendship signed, sealed and delivered" over the course of the next half hour. I'm not a midwife although I have seen babies delivered during my nurse training. I found myself mentally going through the theory of delivering the head, then shoulder, baby and then tying off the cord. I held her hand and counted her through deep breathing, telling her she was doing great, and then turning and reassuring her husband between contractions. I was so relieved when the flashing lights of the ambulance glowed outside.

The paramedics came in and talked and seemed in no hurry but did suggest trying to get my friend to the local hospital (at least a 25 minute drive even with lights and sirens) My gut feeling was screaming out at me that this baby was never going to stay put that long but I was very cautious about influencing whether to do a home birth or not just in case anything went wrong. My friend was wanting to try to go to hospital so between contractions we managed to get her down the stairs and onto the ambulance trolley. As the paramedics strapped her on she was saying she needed to push. Again my gut feelings were saying "Stay and deliver" but I just helped to get the trolley into the back of the ambulance and then ran back passing the husband his shoes, wallet, phone, keys etc.

I stood there in the dark in my dressing gown and bare feet and watched the ambulance pull silently out of the driveway, flashing lights reflecting off the trees and houses around, my heart was pounding and I had a lump in my throat as I watched the lights fade into the distance and found myself involuntarily blessing myself over and over. I returned inside the quiet house where two little girls stayed sleeping oblivious upstairs and waited for the arrival of parents I had never met.

Minutes later a car pulled up and a frantic and anxious grandmother thanked me over and over for helping. I told her all I could and then went home. I had only just finished telling Byron the story when he received a message saying the baby was born two minutes after leaving the house. The waters had broken as they turned onto the main road and the paramedics had pulled over and next push the baby was born. Immediately I felt great disappointment for my friend that she had not made it to the expertise and safety of the hospital or equally stayed in the comfort and reassurance of her familiar bedroom. She told me afterwards that she was not upset about leaving the house so close to the birth as she had needed the freedom to be more noisy and vocal when pushing the baby out than she could ever have been with her daughters asleep in the room next to her at home.

If I'm honest I was also a bit gutted about getting so close to witnessing the birth of my friends baby and then missing out by 2 minutes. I have had stern words with her that I expect her to have baby number 4 as a planned home birth with me there helping. Never mind that she isn't planning to have 4 kids. There is plenty of time for her to get used to the idea. Meanwhile I'm busy preparing by watching re-runs of "A Birth Story" and "Maternity Ward" on Discovery Health...

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It's been a busy month. Grandparents arrived from overseas and time on the computer was reduced so I could be a good and dutiful daughter-in-law!

Lots has happened that I do want to blog about, a 50th Wedding Anniversary, Practically delivering my  friends baby single-handedly in my pyjamas one evening (please note my tendency to exaggerate...) Grandparents day at school and more.

I will share all these stories as soon as I can but collecting my children from school and putting dinner on the table is an unfortunate necessity!

Watch this space...!

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We finished off our holiday with a sunset cruise. It was very relaxing and a lovely last evening together.

I wish holidays could last forever...

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We went on a beautiful Rainforest walk today. The rain had just eased off, everything was lush and green and we practically had the place to ourselves!

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