Diamond Harbour

I worked a short week this week and started the weekend early. Four day weekends: nothing wrong with that.

It was a nice day so we decided to take a little trip across Lyttelton Harbour to the town of Diamond Harbour. Here's a bird's eye view of the town, from its website. It's just a short ferry ride away.

I really like going to Lyttelton (we may have mentioned in the past how much we like Lyttelton). It's a working port, so you can see giant ships hauling stuff around. Coal, containers, logs. Lots of logs. I said, "I wonder where all the logs came from?" Gareth, ever so smart, replied: "Trees."



We weren't really sure where to go when we got off the ferry. We followed a lady who seemed to be walking with a purpose. She led us to a parking lot, where she got in her car and drove away. We had not done any research before going and really weren't sure where we were going or what we would do. We walked uphill and eventually came to what we suppose was the town centre. It had a "country store", a cafe, and a real estate office, and the smallest post office I'd ever seen (Gareth says he's seen smaller).

There was also this place, Godley House, which seems to be the main attraction.

It's a big house with a nice garden out back. It's a B&B, and it appears they also hold functions like weddings there. There's a cafe too, so we got some coffees and sat for a bit. My drink of choice right now: a trim cappuccino. Gareth's: a flat white. They're almost the same thing - I think the flat white just has less milk and no froth.

We then left Godley House and started wandering around. We found a nice trail that followed the edge of the harbour.

The trail led us right back to the ferry landing, and just as the ferry was approaching. What luck! A nice afternoon trip was had by all, although Quinn missed most of it as he was sleeping. He sleeps through all the good stuff it seems...

A walk on the beach

If there was some better way to spend my last day as a stay-at-home mum, I don't know what it could have been.

Shift change

The shift change happens this weekend. Gareth's last day of work is tomorrow, my first day back at work is Monday. Poor little Quinn is not going to have any idea come Monday morning why the One With The Boobs has left him, but we know he'll enjoy his time with the One With The Beard.

We are very lucky that my employer has encouraged me to work from home. In a conversation that may make my boss the greatest boss ever, she told me she knows how hard it is to go back to work with a new baby at home, and that I should work from home as much as I can. My job requires me to be in the office at least 1 day a week, and probably 2 days. But I should be able to work 2 or 3 days a week at home. We've bought a little desk for the spare room and I'm ready to set up my home office in there.

I know it's possible to work and breastfeed. All you need is some determination and a good breast pump. But how much easier will it be to continue breastfeeding if we can eliminate the middle man? Instead of pumping milk into bottles for Gareth to feed the baby, I can pump it directly into the baby. So much simpler. We really are lucky.

Gareth's super excited to take over the at-home parent gig. He's got big plans, including new veggie patches, runs with the buggy, and Monday man-dates with a daddy friend. My own plans for all I'd accomplish while at home did not really pan out. I thought I'd be climbing the Rapaki track every day, losing all the baby weight, and catching up with friends and family on Skype. Instead, I've climbed the Rapaki track 0 times (although there's a mean hill nearby that I go over once or twice on most of our walks, so that counts for something...), still have 20lbs to lose, and have been miserable at keeping up with friends and family in America (sorry guys). I spend most of the day feeding the boy, trying to get him to sleep, or thinking he is going to wake up at any minute. Hopefully Gareth will have more luck with his plans than I've had with mine.

I'm excited to get back to work and find out if my brain still works. Fingers crossed! But I'm also a little sad that my time as a stay-at-home mum is coming to an end. So long, Tuesday morning walks through the park with the boy and a cuppa.

Kaikoura

We took our first family trip this weekend: an overnight visit to Kaikoura. It's about 2 1/2 hours north of Christchurch, on the east coast. Perhaps this map will help illustrate:


View Larger Map

Kaikoura is known for whale watching, but we didn't do that. We just looked around a bit and visited a seal colony. Here's an overview of the town, as seen from a lookout point.

The seals are right there on the beach. You can walk right up to them and poke them in the face if you want to (not recommended). It's crazy. There were signs asking visitors to stay at least 10 metres away, but no one did. Not that people were touching the seals or anything, but they could have. The seals didn't seem too worried though.







Quinn wasn't terribly impressed.

We had heard there were gorgeous mountains nearby, but it was a cloudy afternoon and we couldn't see much. And then suddenly, the clouds broke and we saw them. Wow.

I mean, WOW.


Driving back south to Christchurch, we stopped a couple times to look out at the sea. It was particularly moody looking. Rain is so much more beautiful on a sea coast than inland.

Plus one

It's been reported today that New Zealand's population grew by 51,900 people in the year ending June 30th. That brings us up to 4.37 million. That's the whole country. For comparison, the Phoenix Metropolitan Area has an estimated 4.28 million people (wiki source). The story is in Stuff.

Quinn was one of those 51,900. :)

Mouse in the house

One of the joys of having a new baby in the house is getting up at all hours to feed him. I haven't seen 2 a.m. this often since I was in college. But if it hadn't been for these night time feeds, we would not have discovered our nonpaying tenant. We have a mouse in our house.

I first saw it about 4 weeks ago. I switched on the kitchen light in the middle of the night and saw a small shadow race across the floor. I thought it must have just been a shadow.

A few days later, the same thing happened again, only this time, the shadow had a tail and ran under the dishwasher. A mouse!

I told Gareth he would need to take care of this. Mouse removal is clearly a husband/father duty. But he did not immediately take care of it - I suppose because he's been busy doing everything for the household short of breastfeeding the baby. The mouse must have heard that we were going to come after it though, because he laid low for awhile there.

And then he reappeared this week. He's back, and he's bolder. I saw him race across the living room floor while we were watching tv the other night. And then when I was up at 2:30 last night, I saw him run from the living room, around the dining table, and into the kitchen. He ran around the dining chairs like he had done it a thousand times, like it was a well-travelled route back to home base. This mouse has gotten too comfortable. He must be dealt with.

I said to Gareth this morning that, while not happy to have pests of any kind living in our house, the mouse is heaps better than the cockroaches we had in Arizona. There are enormous, flying cockroaches in Arizona. We would be woken at night by the cat meowing at them (a good cat would have killed the roach; ours just alerted us to its presence and waited for us to smack it with a shoe.) There are few things more gruesome than a giant roach whizzing by your head, or the loud crunch of its body when you smash it dead. (Shudder.) I had no urge to retch when I saw the little mouse. I did not want to scream, or jump up on a chair, or wake up Gareth to save me. I just thought, "A mouse. huh."

Gareth pointed out, though, that the cuteness of mice will make it harder to kill them. True, I said, that will probably make it harder for you... When it's time to kill the mouse, I will probably be busy nursing the boy.

(Incidentally, World Breastfeeding Week just ended, and August is National Breastfeeding Month in the U.S. "Breastfeeding: it's what your bazongas are for." Thanks to Cara for the link.)